Ola Lindberg

I wanted to add a 80 column guideline to Visual Studio Express. I searched the settings without luck. Instead I found Sara Ford’s blog explaining how to do that. In the comments Tobias explained how to do that in Visual Studio Express as well. I tried it in Visual Studio C# Express 2005 and 2008. Works fine. The following is just a compilation from Saras blog with comments, all in one place.

Close Visual Studio. Add a string value to the Windows registry called Guides with the value RGB(153,153,153) 79 for a gray (#999) guideline at column 80 to any of the following locations.

Visual Studio 2005: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER]\Software\Microsoft\
VisualStudio\8.0\Text Editor

Visual Studio Express 2005: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER]\Software\Microsoft\
VCExpress\8.0\Text Editor

Visual Studio Express 2008: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER]\Software\Microsoft\
VCExpress\9.0\Text Editor

It would of course be nice to have the setting in Visual Studio but for now this is good enough!

I have been using a Kinesis Advantage keyboard for half a year now and I think it’s a great keyboard. My hands feels more relaxed now than before and my RSI symptoms have decreased dramatically.

Since I mostly use a Swedish variant of Dvorak (Svorak-A1) I had some problems finding the built in shortcuts for selecting different settings on the layout (the shortcuts mentioned in the manual doesn’t work the same way on a Swedish layout as on a En/Us layout).

On a Swedish version of the Advantage, use the following shortcuts instead

Turn on and off audible tones (sounds for Caps Lock / Num Lock)

• Program + (?+\)

Turn on and off key clicks

• Program + (*’)

Instant Configuration

• (´`) + (w) for “Windows mode”
• (´`) + (p) for “non Windows mode” (use this for international Windows layout and in Linux)
• (´`) + (m) for “Macintosh mode”

Reset (there are several different resets, see the manual for more info) the keyboard:

• Program + Shift + F10

Kinesis On-Board Dvorak Layout (on a Swedish computer)

• Program + Shift + F5

If you are using a Swedish layout and switch to the on-board Dvorak layout your layout will look a bit different than the layout presented in the manual. The attached image shows how my layout works or download the SVG of the layout.