Please install it, run Visual Studio and start playing with it.
Remember not to share this program or its website with anyone else, as it is still unstable and I cannot support it right now.

Please read the release notes (you’ll find it at C:\Program Files\Regionerate) carefully in order to see exactly what is provided with the package.

I would appreciate it if you would pay close attention to the following notes during the Private Alpha evaluation period:

Please use the Private Alpha Discussion Group in order to give me feedback and do not e-mail me directly (Its not that I don’t like you, I just want the discussion to be online in order to slowly build a Regionerate knowledge-base).

The evaluation period will last a week, from Sunday, May 20th to Sunday, May 27th. If you find Regionerate useful, you can keep working with it after the evaluation period, but do not pass it to anyone else.

Also, I would appreciate it if you post issues as they pop up and not wait with them until the end of the evaluation period. This will help me provide answers along the way and make better usage of your input.

Above all, thank you very much, I appreciate it.

I’ve been getting some hints that users might appreciate it if Regionerate worked on Visual Studio 2003, What about you? Please vote.

If you can’t see the voting widget, use this link to vote:

http://www.polldaddy.com/p.asp?p=39944

Development for Private Alpha is done, and now I will pay some attention to system tasks that are related to the deployment – setup program, automated build machine, source control, bug tracking system etc.

The Private Alpha website is now ready and is accessible at http://www.rauchy.net/regionerate/953d21df/.

This address is not intended to go public, so please do not share this with anyone.

The site contains a link to the Private Alpha forum, where I will ask you to write about your Regionerate experience when we start the Private Alpha cycle.

In order to be able to view and post in the Private Alpha forum, you will need to register. After registering, I will grant your user access to the Private Alpha forum.

I remind you that Regionerate’s Private Alpha won’t be out before May 20th, but please try to register before that date.

Thanks,
Omer.

The Plan

Regionerate’s release is planned as follows:

Regionerate’s Private Alpha version (also known as v0.2.0.0) is a preliminary edition of Regionerate and it includes most basic features:

These features are the basic core of Regionerate and I have paid most of the attention to them.
Using your input, I will work to improve and stabilize these features for the Private Beta release.
The Private Beta release (also known as v0.4.0.0) will also include these features:

Combined with documentation, the Public Beta (v0.6.0.0) will include all features of the first Release version of Regionerate.

Your Job

You are asked to evaluate v0.2.0.0 for a week. The nature of your evaluation is totally up to you – you can “play” with it on dummy projects & classes and you can actually try working with it.

Please make sure you give attention to the following subjects:

• Usability – Do you find Regionerate’s Visual Studio.NET plugin intuitive?
• Accuracy – Did Regionerate lose any information in the way? (e.g. lost methods, corrupted fields etc.)
• Did Regionerate follow the Type Template correctly? Did all find all code elements in the right places after running Regionerate?
• Performance – Does it run smoothly without interrupting the Visual Studio.NET user experience?

How’s

v0.2.0.0 is planned for release on Sunday, May 20th, 2007.
I will make sure you get an installed copy on the week between Sunday, May 20th and Thursday, May 24th.

Regionerate’s website can be found at http://www.rauchy.net/regionerate. Right now, there isn’t much content there, but I will set up a private site for Private Alpha in the next couple of days, which you will have access to.

The Private Alpha website will contain a forum in which I will ask you to post your bugs, thoughts and complaints. Please try to post your thoughts as soon as you can, as I would rather not sit all week and wait for the replies and then have them all showered upon me in a couple of days.

I will post again when the Private Alpha website will be up. Meanwhile, you will receive updates from Regionerate’s Development Blog about the status of development.

Thanks!

After completing the Unrecognized Code feature, elements such as indexers, enums, delegates and so on will simply be constructed as Unrecognized Code, meaning that you will not lose them when Regionerating, but you won’t be able to place them in any region. I’ll leave the construction of these code elements to the Private Beta.

I’m going to focus on the plugin the next couple of days, specifically on the keyboard shortcut, auto-expanding regions before Regionerating, auto-collapsing regions after Regionearing and hopefully prepare a setup program.

If I get all that done before May 20th, I’ll try to squeeze in layout separators.

Presentation: Keyboard shortcut to “Regionerate this” button.

Construction: Unrecognized code builder, Interface builder, Enum builder, Delegate builder & Support for nested types.

Layout: Separators.

The rest of the features will be available at the Private Beta.

I’m after a night of 2.5 hours of sleep after finishing up some corners for a short Regionerate presentation I gave today. Went well. I think I’ll rest my head somewhere between the ‘M’ and ‘N’ key. Actually, “Space” is quite comfy.