Good turnout to VS.NET tricks bof

I was totally impressed with the 200 or so people turn out at our VS.NET Tips & Tricks bof. More than one bof organizer was a bit concerned about us bringing a projector - but I don't know how you'd fully appreciate some tips without getting to see them on the screen. It worked well. The O# posse showed up with enough tips to fill the 60 minutes, but we didn't really get to use many of them. The crowd involvement was terrific. At one point, I had to tell people to keep it down because the banter was running wild. This is a good problem. This might have been better done as a VS.NET Tips Cocktail Reception, maybe next year.

My favourite tip? Well it's a tip and a best practice from Dave Lloyd. During and after a build, the output window is kind of important, but VS.NET immediately hides it by default with the Tasks window. We tend to look at the first task to see what caused a failed build but it isn't often the right one. You really need to look at the build output, and you really need it to be bigger than a typical docked window. I'm forever resizing that thing up during a build post-mortem - and back down when I'm done. Right click on the output window title bar and uncheck Dockable. Presto! The output window is now in your editor space as another tab. Beautiful.