Just follow the steps to enable the ‘Build Time’.

1) Take – Tools > Options.
2) Now take - Project and Solutions > VC++ Project Settings.
3) Now enable the ‘Build Timing’ option and rebuild your project.

This article seems useful – How do you reduce compile time, and linking time for Visual C++ projects?. Have a look at it.

You can use Visual Studio IDE itself to generate XSD from XML file. Follow the steps.

1) Open the XML file in Visual Studio IDE.
2) Take View > Other Windows > Command Window.
3) Now type and execute command – XML.CreateSchema
4) See, the schema is generated.

A hidden pearl in VS IDE. Isn’t it?

Targeted Audience – Beginners.

But is there any PoorMan’s SearchSymbols without VisualAssist?

Did you forget about the hidden gem in VisualStudio find window? Yes, the Regular Expressions. You can use .* to do the same search done by VisualAssist. For instance, to do the above search, search for Show.*Msg. Have a look at following screenshots.

Now look at the results. Cool! isn’t it?

Quite easy. nah? BTW, did you try to kill that bug.

Targeted Audience – Beginners.

The secret is, visual C++ compiler passes this pointer via ECX register. So add (ClassName*)(@ECX) to watch window will give you this pointer. Have a look at the screenshot.

Interesting, the internals of Visual C++. Isn’t it?

Targeted Audiance – Intermediate.

Image Courtesy – Pixdaus.

Well, we have to utilize the special feature of visual studio debugger. Basically the watch window is not just a tool to display the variable value. It can evaluate and execute small code snippets as well. If you add a function call to the watch window, that function will be called when debugger refreshes the watch values. So, all you have to do is – Add a global function which accepts integer value, converts it to binary string then display it to output window. Have a look at the function.

// Global function which converts integer to binary
// and dump to the output window.
void DumpBinary( DWORD Value )
{
    // Buffer to hold the converted string.
    TCHAR Buffer[255] = { 0 };

    // Convert the value to binary string.
    _itot( Value, Buffer, 2 );

    // Display to output window.
    CString csMessage;
    csMessage.Format( _T("\n%d in binary: %s"), Value, Buffer );
    OutputDebugString( csMessage );
}

Now if you want to convert the 100 to binary, break at some location and just add DumpBinary(100) to watch window and check the output in the output window. See the screenshot below.

Just now I realized – how powerful the Visual Studio Debugger is. Hats off to Visual Studio Team!

Well, please note that in visual studio 2008 and may be in siblings, When you add this to watch window, its possible to see this error – “CXX0001: Error: error attempting to execute user function”. In that case just click the “Evaluate button” which appears next to it and the expression will be re-evaluate.

Targeted Audiance – Advanced.

To be more specific, If you have specified absolute path like – “c:\Source\BlahBlahProject\Libs” in the project settings, if you move Source folder to D:\ your project won’t compile. Relative paths are good, but its a bit difficult to calculate it. I saw people calculating it with their memory by touching the folder structure in monitor. Some advanced guys uses the windows explorer’s auto complete feature to get the relative path. But is there any other easy method to get it?

Well, You can use Visual Studio for it. Just follow the steps. Assume you want to get the relative path from your project folder to the common lib folder – “c:\Source\BlahBlahProject\Libs”.

1) Load you project in visual studio.
2) Create a file hello.cpp in folder – “c:\Source\BlahBlahProject\Libs”.
3) Add the file to your project by using menu – Project > Add To Project > Files.
4) Right click the file and take Properties.

5) In the properties, you can get the relative path from “Persist as” editbox.

The only limitation is our imagination. Isn’t it?

Targeted Audience – Intermediate.

Assume you have two projects – Project1 and project2 and you want to copy one dialog from Project1 to Project2. Just follow the steps -

For Visual Studio 6.0
1) Load project2 workspace in visual studio.
2) Now Browse and load Project1′s rc file. While opening resource file, select “Open As” as “Resources”.

3) Now drag your required dialog from project1′s resource tree and drop it to your resource tree.

4) You’ve successfully copied dialog from one project to another!

For Visual Studio 2005 and siblings
1) Open your IDE without any solutions loaded.
2) open both RC files into the IDE.
3) Now take Project2 RC file, right click on the dialog you want to export and copy it.

4) Now take Project1 RC file, right click and paste.

5) You see, now the dialog is imported from project1 to Project2.

Well, special thanks to Mike and Alan for their contribution for the trick in Visual Studio 2005.

You could also edit the rc file in some text editor and can copy paste the dialog if you’re a geek.

Targeted Audience – Beginners.

Just use && if you want ampersand as part of caption instead of Keyboard accelerator marker. For instance see the screenshot.

Targeted Audience – Beginners.

As usual, Yes there is! The Visual studio resource editor will take care of it. All you want to do is -

1) Design your dialog as usual. For instance the following dialog.

2) Now take Menu, Layout > Flip. And you’re dialog will be as follows.

Yes! i can read your mind. “The strings are not reversed”. That you can take care while entering the strings. Just enter is as reverse. All visual studio can do is to reverse the layout which itself saves lot of time. isn’t it?

Targeted Audience – Beginners.