Introduction
Parastream Project Publisher .NET adds superior web site publishing to Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. It was inspired by the Microsoft FrontPage publisher, and Visual Studio 2005.
The publisher can replace the Visual Studio “Copy Project” command if desired. It is implemented as a modeless MDI tool window, and as such may be an MDI window, floating, docked, or auto-hide. The new features in Project Publisher .NET are:
- Can perform an incremental project copy, uploading only the files in the project that have changed.
- Fully supports the project file’s FrontPage metadata, contained in the hidden _vti_cnf folders.
- Maintains a log of the most recent publishing operation.
Development
I am handling the entire project, including concept, design, implementation, testing, documentation, packaging, and marketing. The product is written in Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2002 in C# and C++. The documentation is being composed in Microsoft FrontPage 2003, and compiled into a .chm file using Microsoft HTML Help Workshop. The web site pages at https://www.parastream.com/software/projectpublisher are composed in Microsoft FrontPage 2003. The source control used was Perforce.
Technologies
Project Publisher .NET is a Microsoft Visual Studio .NET add-in. Numerous workarounds in the add-in were necessary due to bugs and incorrect/misleading documentation about the IDE. The custom controls were fairly straightforward, once the FrontPage behavior was documented.
- Visual Studio .NET
- Add-In.
- Custom tool window and shim.
- Event handlers.
- Property Extenders.
- Custom Setup Actions.
- FrontPage
- Operational Compatibility.
- Reverse-engineering of file formats.
- Reverse-engineering of poorly-documented FrontPage Server Extensions APIs.
Conclusion
The product contains over 10,000 lines of C# code.