Remember RockScroll? Now there's... MetalScroll!

In May of 2008 a blog post by Scott Hanselman introduced me to RockScroll, an amazing add-in for VisualStudio.

This piece of software made the scrollbar in code editor windows wider and showed an extremely scaled down graphical representation of the code in its place. It would still work as a scrollbar, but you would get a great sense of were you were in the source code file. And it had additional features, like highlighting words you double clicked, both in the editor and in the scrollbar thumbnail image.

RockScroll had a couple of rough edges...

I have used it for quite a while, but unfortunately it had a couple of issues that eventually let it drift from sight:

• It did not take into account (collapsed) code regions.
• You could very easily highlight something when you didn't want to.
• Highlights stayed around until cleared by highlighting something else.
• You could not change the colors that were used in the scrollbar.
• It seemed to have occasional stability issues.

But now there is a solution...

MetalScroll to the rescue!

A new add-in by Mihnea Balta (of Griffin) called MetalScroll now does eveything RockScroll did while, as far as I can tell right now, solving all of these issues and more! It even turned open source.

If you work in VS2005/VS2008, then do yourself a real favour and download it from Google Code now!

UPDATE: If you work in VS2010 (in which COM/Win32 based plugins no longer work due to the WPF rewrite), you can find and install the Productivity Power Tools - which features an enhanced scrollbar with three modes - under Tools, Extension Manager...

Boffoonery: getting back

And there you have it; I should be well on my way back to the European mainland again, maybe even back out of the tunnel already. Just as well too: we've got a Guus Meeuwis concert lined up for tonight in Utrecht. (What was I thinking!)

Boffoonery: being there

At the moment I should definately be at the Bloomsbury Theatre for Boffoonery. I wonder how @bobbyllew will be in the flesh. Will @stephenfry be there, as he would try to be? How will I like the show. Unless plagued by gadget troubles I'll probably be twittering about it.

Boffoonery: getting there

I've been to London a couple of times already, by (almost) all the different available means: plane to Heathrow, ferry (both by car and by coach) and the Channel Tunnel by car. I've even been on the Calais-Dover hovercraft once.

However, as you're reading this I'll be either in the Eurostar train to St.Pancras or already in London. My first train ride to the UK. Can't wait to get to Boffoonery...