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In case anyone noticed... I changed the heading of this blog from "GUI, .Net and..." to "TFS, ALM and...". Now why did I do that? Basically because it is what I'll be working with from now on and it is very interesting  The "anything else that comes to my mind" leaves a lot of room for other stuff though. Like Mushroom Management and other interesting things...

I finally got my HTC HD2 and I love it! The included headset on the other hand... complete and utter crap. Why HTC continue to ship their phones with lousy headsets is a mystery to me. Their phones are reat but the headsets always takes away from an otherwise pleasant experience. So, if you plan to buy this phone, make sure to order a new headset.

This is nothing new, but I was not aware it had a name. Mushroom management... Why are anti-patterns so much more fun than all the useful patterns?  

I found some more info on TFS 2010 and the "Basic" version on bharry's WebLog.

Lot's of nice pictures there but I'll skip right to the listed features of TFS 2010 Basic:
All of this gives you a development system with Version Control, Bug tracking and build automation (making continuous integration a snap!).  What it lacks from Standard TFS is Sharepoint and Reporting capabilities.  The great thing though is that TFS "Basic” IS TFS so as your needs grow you can reconfigure it to add more capabilities.

I'm guessing this will quickly become the most common setup. SourceSafe on steroids... while TFS Standard/Advanced will be SourceSafe on sci-fi steroids :)  

Apparently support for SourceSafe is set to end in mid-2011. SourceSafe users need not worry, MS has you covered. With TFS 2010 there will be a "Basic" installation option which will allow you to installa TFS (or at least a part of it) on client OSes. Just like SourceSafe. Further more, the Basic version is supposed to be cheaper than the full TFS license.

Now, the only question is what features of TFS will be included in this Basic installation? My guess is source control only. Which is more than enough reason to move from SourceSafe to TFS Basic asap in my opinion. 

I finally found some time to get my blog up and running again. Even found a nice theme to use. Needs some tweeking but it is good enough for the moment.

I have no idea why my blog died on me (bored from inactivity maybe) but instead of debugging it I choose to just move on to BlogEnginge.Net 1.5. Exporting settings and posts was more or less a matter of copy/paste :)

So, here is the short review of TFS Windows Shell Extensions in Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Power Tools.

Me and a couple of colleagues installed it... and it is actually quite nice. Now that I have it installed I dont think I want to work without it  You get all the basic TFS source control related actions in the explorer window, no more, no less. The name is still a few letters too long for my liking

One of my colleagues ran into some trouble with TFS Windows Shell Extensions though. The icon overlays in explorer did not show up properly. Turns out there was a "simple" explanation...

"Windows Shell has a hard limit of 15 registered Icon Overlays and reserves 4 for its own use. If you do not see your TFS controlled files and folders displayed with these overlays but the context menus are displaying correctly you may have run into this limit. The only workaround is to uninstall one of the applications that is using the available slots or disabling its shell integration."

No big deal, as long as you know which application to uninstall...

Lately I've had a few TFS users complain to me that the TFS client (aka Team Explorer+Visual Studio) lacks the explorer integration you get with TortoiseSVN. Now, I've never felt the need for this feature but decided to do some research. And guess what? You CAN get explorer integration with TFS! In several different ways!

• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Power Tools
• Dubbelbock TFS
• SvnBridge
• LizardTF

I have not tried any of them (yet) but I'd recommend the power tools... mainly because it is Microsoft and they'll eventually steamroll the competition (except maybe SvnBridge). Just pay attention to this small but important part of the "instructions" on the download page:

"Please note that the TFS Windows Shell Extensions are not installed by default. Choose Custom when prompted at installation to add the tool to the installed components."

If I'm not too busy I'll write up a short review of the TFS Windows Shell Extension in Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Power Tools. Jeez... Microsoft, you relly need a shorter name for these tools!

My colleague Torkel Ödegaard just released CodeSaga, a free source code repository analyser for TFS and Subversion. Not only does it have some really nice and useful features (with more coming) but it looks real good too! Nice work Torkel!

Why do some pop ups insist on popping up BEHIND all other windows!? Seriously, its the most annoying thing ever and it is wasting my time!