Tag: Visual Studio

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Imaginet’s “Unlock the Power of Visual Studio 2010” Events in Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary

imaginet unlock the power

Our friends at Imaginet are hosting two-hour events in Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary where they’ll show Visual Studio developers how to get up to speed with all the goodies that have packed into Visual Studio 2010. Here’s what they’ll cover:

What’s new in Team Foundation Server 2010

Learn about important updates and enhancements to Team Foundation Server in the 2010 release.  Understand key components such as: Branches as a first class citizen, Branch visualization, and Change set history visualization.  See how using Team Project Collections can improve manageability and scalability.  Imaginet will demonstrate hierarchical work items and typed work item relationships as well as improvements to Team Build including features such as Buddy Builds and Gated Check In.

Testing Tools & Rich Developer-Tester Interaction with Visual Studio 2010

Imaginet will demonstrate the new testing tools in Visual Studio 2010 and how the generalist tester is now brought into the full Microsoft ALM platform.  The new Test Professional product is a purpose-built tool for test professionals to plan, execute and manage testing of your web, Windows Forms or WFP application.  See how the rich defect reporting including IntelliTrace and other information about the execution and system under test, helps eliminate the “I can’t reproduce the bug” response from development.  Test Lab Management can also assist in streamlining the setup and teardown of test labs for test.

These events are free, and they’ll be taking place in the following cities on the following dates:

City When Where
Vancouver
(click here to register)		 Monday, October 25 Fairmont Waterfront Hotel
Malaspina Room
900 Canada Place Way
Calgary
(click here to register)		 Monday, November 8 Met Centre
Grand Lecture Hall
333 Fourth Avenue SW
Edmonton
(click here to register)		 Tuesday, November 9 Shaw Conference Centre
Salon 12
9797 Jasper Avenue

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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The “What’s New in Visual Studio” Sessions – March 1st through 9th in Selected Canadian Cities [Updated]

image

If you’re wondering what’s new in Visual Studio 2010, you’re going to want to catch these sessions taking place in March. You’ll get a grand tour of all the new capabilities as well as the new MSDN offerings that come with the new Visual Studio.

The “What’s New” sessions are taking place in these cities:

City Date Invitation Key
Edmonton Monday, March 1 8ACE98
Calgary Tuesday, March 2 9FA90A
St. John’s, Newfoundland Tuesday, March 2 C89B02
Mississauga Thursday, March 4 5A1CB4
Quebec City Tuesday, March 9 1C5C3C

 

Here’s the event schedule:

  • Registration & Breakfast
    8:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.
  • Event Opening Ceremonies
    9:00 a.m. – 9:10 a.m.
  • Live technical demonstration:
    What’s new with Visual Studio Team System 2010
    9:10 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
  • Q&A
    11:00 a.m. – 11:20 a.m.
  • Event close / completion of evaluation form
    11:20 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

If you’d like to attend one of these sessions, select the Invitation Key from the city whose session you want to attend and enter it on the Registration page.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Visual Studio 2010 / .NET Framework 4 Release Candidate [UPDATED]

visual studio 2010 logo

If you’re looking for the latest and greatest version of Visual Studio, you’ll want to get your paws on the Release Candidate for Visual Studio and .NET Framework 4.0! It was made available to MSDN subscribers yesterday (if you’re an MSDN subscriber, you can download it immediately), and will be available to the general public tomorrow, Wednesday, February 10.

The changes in the Release Candidate (RC) are based on your feedback from the Beta 2 version and include improvements to:

  • General UI responsiveness (including painting, menus, remote desktop and VMs)
  • Editing (typing, scrolling, Intellisense)
  • Designers (particularly Silverlight and WPF)
  • Memory usage
  • Debugging (stepping, managed/native interop)
  • Build times
  • Solution/project load times

Here’s a Channel 9 video featuring Visual Studio General Manager Jason Zander talking about how the Visual Studio team addressed the feedback you gave for Beta 2:

Get Microsoft Silverlight

The team has tested the RC on all the projects they could get their hands on, but not all the projects in existence. That’s why we’re making the RC build freely available to you so you can try it out on your projects! We want to hear from you, so please give the RC a try and let us know what you think via our survey site.

In the meantime, the Visual Studio team is working closely with vendors who’ve created popular Visual Studio add-ins, such as Resharper, CodeRush and so on to make sure that Visual Studio 2010 works with them.

Update: An Extra Note from Scott Guthrie

Our goal with releasing the public RC build today is to get a lot of eyes on the product helping to find and report the remaining bugs we need to fix.  If you do find an issue, please submit a bug report via the Visual Studio Connect site and also please send me an email directly (scottgu@microsoft.com) with details about it.  I can then route your email to someone to investigate and follow-up directly (which can help expedite the investigation).

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Netbook Experiment Report #1

the netbook experimentIn case you hadn’t read my article from Friday, I’m conducting a little experiment this week – I’m seeing what it’s like to use a “netbook“ computer (a Dell Latitude 2100, to be specific) as my primary machine for the whole week. I’m trying this out as a response to Jeff “Coding Horror” Atwood’s article, in which he rebuts my argument that the computers we typically classify as “netbooks”, occupy a neither-here-nor-there, worst-of-both-worlds middle ground between smartphones and laptop computers.

As I promised in that earlier article, I’d report on my experiences. This is the first of a number of such reports that I plan to file throughout the week.

Jeff Atwood Replies

Jeff saw my article and replied in Global Nerdy, warning me that I’d be disappointed with my particular netbook’s performance due to its Intel Atom processor:

I can guarantee you’ll be unhappy with the Atom CPU. It’s OK for light web browsing, but that’s it. That’s all. No mas.

I was disappointed, but not surprised, that Intel shows zero interest in making the next-gen Atom faster. Pineview is much better power wise but nil improvement in performance.

The good news is that the CULV Pentiums — like the dual core model in the Acer Aspire 4100 I wrote about — are about 2x faster than the Atom and surprisingly power efficient. Totally acceptable for medium duty laptop stuff.

The key to being satisfied with a netbook is to get out of the Intel Atom ghetto that Intel wants to keep them in…

Visual Studio Express 2010: Too Slow

visual studio 2010 icon As a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft, one of the tools I use most often is Visual Studio, the integrated development environment that’s typically used for developing applications for Microsoft-based platforms, from the desktop to web applications hosted on Windows Server, to mobile apps for Windows Phone and Zune to console apps for the Xbox 360. I currently run both Visual Studio 2008 and Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2010.

Visual Studio 2010 (along with the free Express versions) is the first version of Visual Studio to be built using WPF – Windows Presentation Foundation – the relatively new graphics framework for Windows desktop applications, which makes it easier to give apps the sort of modern appearance that users have come to expect these days. Visual C# Express 2010 and Visual Web Developer 2010 are based on the full version of Visual Studio 2010, and the combination of WPF and the fact that they’re beta 2 and not yet fully optimized proved to be too much for the netbook. I spent a lot of time waiting as they loaded, created new projects, switched views and built apps – more time than I thought was reasonable. I’ve since uninstalled them.

Visual Studio Express 2008: Works Just Fine

visual studio 2008 icon On the other hand, Visual C# Express 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008 work just fine. I’m having no trouble building apps in ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight or XNA and experiencing no slow-downs. It remains to be seen if the final versions of Visual Studio 2010 with their final optimizations will run without the slowdowns.

I’ll post more updates as I have more experiences!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Visual Studio 2010 Event in Kitchener-Waterloo: Thursday, January 21st

Attention Kitchener-Waterloo residents: Better Application Lifecycle Management with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, presented by Dave Lloyd

If you’re in the Kitchener-Waterloo area and want to know more about Visual Studio 2010, you should check out the Visual Studio 2010 presentation by ObjectSharp and Microsoft on the morning of Thursday, January 21st.

Dave Lloyd of ObjectSharp will walk you through the goodies in the upcoming Visual Studio 2010 and how they can help you and your team with all those things you do in your day-to-day development, from collaboration to architecture to prototyping to testing and debugging.

You’ll also learn about the Ultimate Offer, which is a great way to level up your Visual Studio licence and MSDN subscription levels. This offer won’t be around forever!

This event is free-as-in-beer to attend; all you have to do is register. I’ve provided the details below:

How do I sign up for the event? Register here and enter this invitation key when prompted:

DEAA69
When is the event? Thursday, January 21st, 2010.
Registration takes place from
9:00 – 9:30 a.m.
Presentation takes place from
9:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

Includes a continental breakfast buffet
Where is the event? St. George Hall
655 King Street North
Hall
Waterloo, Ontario

There’s free parking at the event in the lot just off King Street.

 

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Visual Studio 2010/.NET Framework 4.0 Beta 2 and Final

Microsoft Visual Studio new banner

The Beta: Available Now!

The newest beta, Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 is out! MSDN subscribers can download it right away, while everyone else can get their hands on it on Wednesday, October 21st (and don’t worry, I’ll remind you if you on Wednesday if you have to wait until then).

This new beta features a number of performance improvements and is your last chance to evaluate a pre-release version before we unleash the final version, so download it, take it out for a spin and give us your feedback!

Beta 2 also features the “Go Live” provision for developers who like living on the edge. What this means is that you’re licensed to download the beta and use it to build production software. If you do so, please drop me a line and let me know!

The Final: Available March 22, 2010!

The final version of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 will be available on March 22, 2010. Among the many new features in the final version is the fact that choosing which Visual Studio is right for you will be so much simpler. Instead of the confusing array of Visual Studio versions (I’ve joked about there being so many version that I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a “Visual Studio Tartar Control” or “Visual Studio for LOLcats”), the line has been pared down to three levels: Professional, Premium and Ultimate: 

3 levels of Visual Studio: Professional (with picture of burger), Premium (with picture of burger and fries) and Ultimate (with picture of burger, fries and shake)

Visual Studio can be bought bundled with an MSDN subscription. I recommend getting the subscription , as it gives you first crack at a lot of tools, access to E-Learning and the Special Offers portal for discounts from Microsoft partners, and – most importantly, as far as I’m concerned – a lot of compute time on the Azure cloud platform.

There’s a goodie called the “Ultimate Offer” that’s available for a limited time: buy or renew your MSDN subscription now, and you’ll get the next-level-up version of Visual Studio when we hit the final release date. For example, if you get an MSDN subscription and you have a version of Visual Studio 2008 eligible for upgrade to Visual Studio 2010 Professional, you’ll get Visual Studio 2010 Premium in March (and if you’re eligible for upgrade to Premium, you’ll get Ultimate).

What’s in .NET 4?

A lot. To borrow a line from Scott Hanselman, this isn’t “.NET 3.6”, and it’s not just a bunch of features piled onto the current .NET 3.5. This is a .NET that’s been revised based on your feedback. To quote Hanselman again, it’s about “making the Legos the right size”, “about tightening screws as it is about adding new features.”

Some of the goodies in .NET 4, once again courtesy of Hanselman, include:

  • Quicker to Install – A smaller Client Profile with a much smaller initial download (down to 0.8 megs from 2.8) for bootstrapping .NET client apps faster than ever)
  • Side by Side – .NET 4 is a side-by-side release that doesn’t auto-promote, meaning you won’t break existing apps and you can have .NET 2.0, 3.5 and 4 apps on the same machine, happily.
    • Side-by-side CLR support for managed add-ins inside of apps like Explorer or Outlook. Again, new and existing apps in the same process, chillin’.
    • For more details on Application Compatibilty, check out the AppCompat Walkthrough for .NET 4 on MSDN.
  • Dynamic Language Support – The DLR (Dynamic language runtime) ships built-in with .NET 4 so you can mix-and-match your solutions and pick the best language (or languages) amongst C# and VB.NET as well as F#, IronPython and IronRuby. This includes better support for COM (yes, COM! People do use COM and it’s even easier with the new dynamic keyword in C# these days.)
  • More Web Standards Support – Better support for WS-* and REST making interop easier.
  • Plugins Galore – Visual Studio 2010 uses MEF and WPF to enable a whole new world of clean managed extensions as well as an Online Gallery (there’s an extension for that!)
  • Multi-Framework Multi-targeting – You can’t really overestimate how useful this is, but a picture is worth a thousand words. You can code all your apps in all your organization’s frameworks with the same IDE:
    Drop-down menu showing the .NET Frameworks that Visual Studio 2010 can target

    New Look, New Feel for MSDN

    And finally, both Visual Studio and MSDN got a new look. Here’s the new look for MSDN Canada:

    Screenshot of the "new look" MSDN Canada
    The changes are more than skin-deep. MSDN was redesigned to make it easier for you to find what you need, whether it’s tools, downloads, resources, documentation or people. The MSDN library will also get much faster at loading and easier to read, because the “lightweight” look is going to be the standard look:

    Screen shot of the "new look" MSDN Library

    Keep an eye on this blog – I’m going to start covering development with Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0 in the coming weeks!

    This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.