Disable Design-Time Support in Visual Studio

I recently wrote a class in c# that inherits from System.Diagnostics.Process. This class abstracts a shelling-to-disk process that I need to do. Something like this:

public class MyShellTask : Process
{
...
}

One thing that bugged me to no end is that, in Visual Studio, when you double click the file in the Solution Explorer, it considered it "designable" even though there was no designer. So that means I got a empty page every time, telling me that it was not designable, with a link to "View Code". Well, "View Code" is what I wanted, not "View Designer", when I double-clicked!

So after getting very frustrated, I did the natural thing.. I googled looking for an answer. I had a notion that I could control this behaviour through Attribute tags on the class if only I knew the right one. Having made designable components before I was familiar with the attributes used for that. I tried fiddling about with Intellisense, Googling, all to no avail.. Nothing worked! Nothing showed up in my Google searches! Good God! What to do now?

Fiddle some more... until finally I found the right attribute:

[System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategory("")]
public class MyShellTask : Process
{
...
}

Note that you must call this with an empty string (don't believe the intellisense comment, an empty constructor call will NOT do the same as calling the constructor with an empty string.) This sets it to a non-category that it doesn't know how to deal with, and so doesn't offer designer support to you!


This also helps custom installer class for use with your Visual Studio Setup projects, which exhibit the same annoying VS UI problems... ie:

/// 

/// Custom Installer actions for this project.
/// 
[RunInstaller(true)]
[System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategory("")]
public partial class MyInstaller : Installer
{
   ...
}

Hope that helps someone! Now there will be at least ONE hit if someone googles up "disable design-time support" or "disable designer support" like I did!

Java, NetBeans, and Templates, OH MY!

Well, having recently sparked an interest in moving towards a Open Source, cross platform, but still as cool as c#/VS2005 development platform, I of course landed in the middle of NetBeans 5.5 and Java.

Having never programmed in Java before, but understanding it's really similar to c# (or I should say c# is really similar to Java), I immediately started fiddling about as if I were writing c# code. So, it's easy to get past typing uppercase String, not lowercase, and also not too hard to grok "extends" instead of ":" for inheritance. The one-class-per-file thing, well, I guess it will just make me a more organized programmer, however annoying it is. But the things that really erked me was properties.

In c# I can do this:

...
private string _name;

public string Name
{
  get
  {
      return this._name;
  }
  set
  {
      this._name = value;
  }
}
...

but in Java, that looks like:

...
private String _name;

public String getName()
{
  return this._name;
}

public void setName(string value)
{
  this._name = value;
}
...

Wow. Extremely obnoxious. Furthermore, I have finally gotten myself broken in with the VS2005 IDE to type "prop" + TAB to get a nice template for my properties. Well, since there is no such thing in Java, this macro also does not exist. So, I proceeded to make a NetBeans code template called "prop", which functions the same way the VS2005 "prop" code snippet does.

So, for all you c# coders who are venturing into the foreign lands of Java, here's a little tutorial on how to add this little cultural comfort into NetBeans.


Property Code Template Installation Instructions:

1. Select menu item "Tools->Options".
2. Click on "Editor" sidebar button.
3. Click on "Code Templates" tab.
4. Select "Java" from languages combo-box.
5. Click "New", and then enter "prop" as the Abbreviation in the dialog.
6. Click "Ok".
7. Make sure "prop" is the selected template, and in the text box below the list, enter these lines:

  private ${int} ${_prop};

  public ${int} get${Property}()
  {
      return this.${_prop};
  }

  public void set${Property}(${int} value)
  {
          this.${_prop} = value;
  }

8. Select "Tab" from "Expand On" combo box.
9. Click "OK".


Now you've got it installed.. Feel free to go to the code and give it a whirl! Have a look at the other macros in the list to see what's built in, and once you figure out the syntax of the template notation, make your own templates!