Shortcuts in VS.NET 2003

I wanted to put down some of the useful shortcuts not known to many developers so here goes

[CTRL] + [TAB] Toggles betwen the open tabbed documents

[CTRL] + G Pops up the goto line window, useful in going to that specific line shown in the stack trace

[CTRL] + - Go to the last cursor position (same as in VB6)

[CTRL] + [SHIFT] + - Go to the next position (useful after the 'Last Position' command)

[CTRL] + + highlights the region of text between the previous and current cursor positions

[CTRL] + I Incremental search of a variables/function name in the code file the first occurence of which is highlighted as you type the letters on the keyboard

[SHIFT] + [DELETE] Deletes the current line

.NET Beta 2.0 and DirectX 9.0

I think it is too late now to add something about the Beta 2.0 of .NET as almost every .NET blogger has put up links to Microsoft's download pages. Hence I have decided to write something about the new section in MSDN called Coding4Fun which is for the hobbyist who derives satisfaction in coding on weekends and on late nights.This is a great site featuring columns like Cool applications, Game development and some assembly required (my personal favourite) which deals with interfacing hardware and gadgets with your PC using the .NET Beta 2 Express editions. This is one of the best ways to getting your hands into .NET 2.0.

I liked the Coding4Fun site so much that I decided to have a play with DirectX 9.0 (finally after playing all those free VB6 DirectX games). Some of the best resources for DirectX are the sample documentation and code that comes as part of the installation for the
DirectX 9.0 SDK, the Hello Teapot example which is called a HelloWorld into managed DirectX, the MDXlib9.0 also found on Gotdotnet which is a wrapper for the most common functionality needed to set up a DirectX app and last but not the least the Coding4Fun game development column.

Also worth checking out is the 'Shot It' game done by Mathias Kunter which is a nicely done 3D ego shooter. The game is in VB6.0 using DirectX 7.0.