I'm still playing around with that MakeRegion macro that Philip first posted. Today I added a regular expression to parse the first line of code and extract only the member name instead of the entire line.

For instructions on how to install, see The Blog That Started It All.

Imports EnvDTE
Imports EnvDTE80
Imports System.Diagnostics
Imports System.Text.RegularExpressions

Public Module Regions

  Sub MakeRegion()
    Regions.MakeRegion()
  End Sub

  Public Class Regions
    ' MakeRegion inserts #region and #endregion tags
    ' around selected text in the VS editor.
    Shared Sub MakeRegion()
      Dim rName As String = ""
      Dim pad As String = ""
      Dim junk As String
      Dim count, i As Integer
      Dim startpoint, endpoint, tmppoint As EditPoint

      With DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection
        startpoint = .TopPoint.CreateEditPoint()
        endpoint = .BottomPoint.CreateEditPoint
      End With

      If startpoint.EqualTo(endpoint) Then
        Exit Sub
      End If

      'ELR: ADDED THIS, to move the startpoint to the start of the line()
      'so that the Pad function works correctly
      If Not startpoint.AtStartOfLine Then
        startpoint.StartOfLine()
      End If

      Dim DefaultResponse = GetDesc(DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection.TopPoint.CreateEditPoint())
      Dim re As Regex = New Regex("\s(\w+)\s*(?:\(|\:|$)")
      DefaultResponse = re.Match(DefaultResponse).Groups(1).Value

      'IV 2004-12-13: rName = InputBox("Region Name:")
      rName = InputBox("Type the name you want to give to the region, which will appear in the Visual Studio Code Editor.", "Make Region", _
      DefaultResponse)

      rName = rName.Trim()

      If rName.Length = 0 Then
        Exit Sub
      End If

      DTE.UndoContext.Open("Insert A Region")
      Try
        junk = startpoint.GetText(startpoint.LineLength)

        pad = String.Empty
        For count = 0 To junk.Length - 1
          If junk.Substring(count, 1).Equals(" ") _
          Or junk.Substring(count, 1).Equals(vbTab) Then
            pad += junk.Substring(count, 1)
          Else
            Exit For
          End If
        Next

        'ELR: ADDED Test for Languages
        If DTE.ActiveDocument.Language = "CSharp" Then
          ' C Sharp Code
          startpoint.Insert(String.Format("{0}#region {1}{2}", _
           pad, rName, vbCrLf))
          If endpoint.LineLength = 0 Then
            endpoint.Insert(String.Format("{0}#endregion {1}{2}", _
             pad, rName, vbCrLf))
          Else
            endpoint.Insert(String.Format("{0}#endregion {1}", _
             vbCrLf & pad, rName))
          End If
        Else
          ' VB Code
          startpoint.Insert(String.Format("{0}#Region {1}{2}", _
           pad, rName, vbCrLf))
          If endpoint.LineLength = 0 Then
            endpoint.Insert(String.Format("{0}#End Region '{1}{2}", _
             pad, rName, vbCrLf))
          Else
            endpoint.Insert(String.Format("{0}#End Region '{1}{2}", _
             vbCrLf & pad, rName, vbCrLf))
          End If
        End If
      Finally
        DTE.UndoContext.Close()
      End Try
    End Sub

    ' IV: Get the description from the 1st line of code in the region
    ' i.e. ignore c# comment tags (///) or take 1st line of the comments (//)
    ' Requires adjustments for VB and other langs
    Private Shared Function GetDesc(ByVal startpoint As EditPoint) As String
      Dim line As String = ""
      Dim tmppoint As EditPoint

      line = startpoint.GetText(startpoint.LineLength)
      If (line.Length > 0) Then
        line = line.TrimStart(" ", vbTab)
        If DTE.ActiveDocument.Language = "CSharp" Then
          If (line.StartsWith("///")) Or (line.StartsWith("[")) Then
            tmppoint = startpoint
            tmppoint.LineDown()
            line = GetDesc(tmppoint)
          ElseIf (line.StartsWith("//")) Then
            line = line.TrimStart("//", " ")
          End If
          line = line.Replace("{", String.Empty)
        End If
        line = line.TrimEnd(" ", vbTab)
      End If
      Return line
    End Function
  End Class

End Module

Here's a little code snippet that will search a collection of Controls for the first control of a specified type.

private object FindControlByType( Control root, Type t )
{
  if ( root != null && root.GetType().Equals( t ) )
    return root;
  foreach( Control c in root.Controls )
  {
    object node = FindControlByType( c, t );
    if ( node != null && node.GetType().Equals( t ) )
      return node;
  }
  return null;
}

Example: the following example returns the first instance of an HtmlForm in a Page's Control collection:

HtmlForm form = (HtmlForm) FindControlByType( Page, typeof( HtmlForm ) );

Danc of Lost Garden has written many interesting and thought-provoking articles, mostly about game design. Today's article, however, is wider in scope, addressing the evolution of product design, and is well worth the read.

Krugle is a search engine for source code that is supposed to make life easier for us developers. You can sign up for the Beta on their website and try it out sometime next month.  http://www.krugle.com/

Is Courier New just not doing it for you anymore? This page summarizes and rates different fixed-width fonts based on their suitability for use in a programming environment. The reviewer evaluates several factors including how easily the characters 'l', '1', and 'i' are distinguised, as well as the characters '0', 'o', and 'O'. After browsing several of the handy font previews, simply follow the associated link to download your new favorite programming font. The top-rated font, Bitstream Sans Vera Mono, looks great without ClearType and awful with it, so if you have font smoothing enabled, I recommend you look further down the list for something that plays better with ClearType

The MSDN Library says this about the DataGrid.Items property:

"Only items bound to the data source are contained in the Items collection. The header, footer, and separator are not included in the collection."

So how do we get to these other items? Most people handle the ItemCommandEvent for the grid, but there is a way to access them directly.

If these items are not in the DataGrid.Items collection, then where are they? To find out, turn on tracing for your ASP.NET webpage. You will see that the grid is rendered something like this:

DataGrid
   DataGridTable
      DataGridItem
         TableCell
         TableCell
      DataGridItem
         TableCell
         LiteralControl
         Label
      DataGridItem
      ...

What we are seeing is that the first object in the DataGrid's Control hierarchy is a DataGridTable. That DataGridTable contains ALL of the DataGridItems, including the header and footer. To get these DataGridItems we just need to grab the first or last control out of the DataGridTable's control collection.

So to get a DataGrid's footer, this code will do this trick:

//First get the DataGridTable (the first control in DataGrid's control collection.)
//Then grab the last control in the DataTable's Collection
DataGridItem footer = 
    DataGrid1.Controls[0].Controls[DataGrid1.Controls[0].Controls.Count -1] as DataGridItem;