I'm currently developing an application and I got so tired of looking at the same old MessageBox that I've been looking at for years and thought surely someone on CP has a better mouse trap. I found a few fairly decent solutions but then discovered that when Vista came out Microsoft included a very nifty TaskDialog control and provided an API but it was in unmanaged code. So I looked around a little more and found an excellent article by KevinGre TaskDialog for WinFormsthat was basically a wrapper but when I tried to run it I had problems and as opposed to diving into old code (written in Jan 2007) I looked around for something more recent.

I've been asked to provide some insight into Visual Studio Extensibility and since it is such a huge subject I've decided to break it down into a series of acticles starting with the basics and branching out into different areas depending on interest (yours and mine) so if you have a particular area that you would like me to write about please leave me a message and I'll do my best to get something on paper. Also if you have any questions feel free to message me and I will get back to you. The response to your questions depends on the amount of information you provide me!

The ToDoManager extension is a basic application that was created to allow the user to manage Tasks from within Visual Studio, to provide as much information about the task as possible and to be simple to use while keeping resource usage at a minimum. Originally developed for the new AVR Studio 5.0 IDE it can also be used with Visual Studio 2010 and is ideal for the lone developer as a replacement for the Visual Studio TaskManager. And now updated for the AVRStudio 5.1 and Atmel Studio 6.0.

Version 1.0.6 Available

Looking for an easy way to keep track of all those electronic components?, With minimal effort you can also track orders and create material lists that automatically update your inventory. This simple to use application is customizable and has an intuitive user interface that is designed with the electronic hobbyist in mind.

There are many ways to drive small current motors, those requiring 500mA or less but the L293H Quadruple Half-H driver is a verstatile chip that was designed for use with motors, can very easily be controlled with a micro-controller and can be purchased [here]. Using this chip we can drive either 2 DC motors or one Stepper motor and we will learn how to do both in this tutorial. The components needed to complete this excerise are an ATMega328p Micro-controller to interface with and control the L293D device but any controller may be used, the L293D component and one dc motor and/or one stepper motor.

This control was originally designed to be used as part of an application that is being developed as a Proof of concept for an event based program where devices are to be controlled at defined time intervals. After doing much research the closest thing that could be found that matched the functional requirements for this control was a interactive Gantt type chart. But the control's that I found either did not provide the functionality I needed or were to expensive so it was decided that one could be developed.