Hello everyone. Code Magazine just posted a useful article summing up how to take advantage of the Visual Studio Gallery and also does a tour of some of their favorite extensions to Visual Studio.
Check it out here: http://www.code-magazine.com/Article.aspx?quickid=0800023
Hello all. I wanted to share with everyone some info about the upcoming VSX Developer Conference the Visual Studio Ecosystem team and the VSIP team is hosting in September.
This event is being hosted on Microsoft Campus in Redmond at the Microsoft Conference Center on September 15th & 16th. The conference is open to all developers who are interested in learning about extending Visual Studio 2008.
The conference will be entirely focused on Visual Studio Extensibility with a keynote from the General Manager for Visual Studio, Jason Zander. Sessions will include introductory sessions on how to get started with extending Visual Studio 2008 as well as more advanced topics around extending the Visual Studio Shell, DSL, VSTS and more. We'll share some highlights about extensibility enhancements in the next release of Visual Studio.
To register visit msdn.com/vsx/conference. There is a $100 registration fee which will go towards attendee handouts including a copy of Professional Visual Studio Extensibility by Keyvan Nayyeri and other other items.
If you have any questions about this event just email vsxconf@microsoft.com.
Today we released a significant update to the Visual Studio Gallery (visualstudiogallery.com) adding some much needed community features. The latest set of features will help visitors keep up to date on the latest additions to the Visual Studio Gallery and add rich details information about their extension & products.
With the latest update to the site we’ve now added:
- Tons of fixed RSS feeds for everything from the recently added & highest rated extensions to feeds for each of the available categories to see the latest updates in specific types of extensions.
- Tagging support allowing authors to tag extensions and better describe their products to users.
- Dynamic RSS Feeds for each Tag so that any users can subscribe & keep up with new additions.
- Dev Center owners can tag common entries and then suck in the feed on your MSDN page to highlight specific extensions.
- Ken Levy has this working already on the VSX Dev Center (msdn.com/vsx) landing & community pages.
- Authors can now add details about their extensions using either the WSIWYG or new HTML editor.
- Support for larger thumbnails lets contributors upload images up to 640 x 480.
- Visitors can now click to zoom larger thumbnails to see the full size version.
Last month we added a number of other community features to gallery including:
Please give these features a try and let us know what you think. We are always taking new suggestions and feedback on the site.
In November 2006 Microsoft released a CTP version of the VS 2005 Extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WPF & WCF). We released this CTP as a stop gap to provide developers the needed (albeit very limited) set tools to start developing for the .NET Framework 3.0. This was never intended to release as a complete product and was only intended as a stop gap until Visual Studio 2008, codenamed Orcas was released.
Since then Visual Studio 2008 has released and SP1 is on the way. With VS 2008 you have a set of tools designed entirely to take advantages of the functionality introduced with WCF & WPF. Users who have been developing using the CTP extensions should have already migrated their projects to VS 2008 to take advtange of the new functionality which is far better than what we were able to deliver in the CTP.
On Monday, June 30th 2008, the license for this CTP will expire. The download will be removed from the MS Download center. At that point any existing users should work on migrating their projects to VS 2008 to take advantage of the fully supported WPF & WCF support.
The best place to get help and answers to any questions about moving your projects over is on the here on the MSDN Forum: http://forums.msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/forums/.
Regards
Anthony
One of the biggest areas the Visual Studio Ecosystem team receives feedback on is around difficulties with acquiring and installing Package Load Keys (PLK) which are needed for deploying your Visual Studio Package to a machine that doesn't have the Visual Studio SDK installed.
Historically PLK's & more recently SLK's (Shell Load Keys for deploying a Visual Studio Shell based application) could only be acquired through the vsipmembers.com website. The overwhelming feedback we got from users who were just looking for a PLK was that there was too much process on that site for obtaining the PLK's.
We recently made the process of getting PLK's & SLK's several steps easier by exposing the PLK & SLK generation forms directly on MSDN here. Now you can generate whatever PLK's or SLK's you need without having to sign into vsipmembers.com, create a company profile or provide detailed product information. The form simply asks for the key values needed to generate your PLK or SLK.
At the same time we've also created a new VSX Flash Newsletter for affiliate members to keep up with latest information & events around the Visual Studio Extensibility (VSX) community. The newsletter goes out approximately once a month and will include updates on the latest project the VS Ecosystem team is working on, new features we are developing, and other extensibility related announcements.
With that we are retiring the Affiliate level. After August 1, 2008 Affiliate level members will no longer be able to sign into the vsipmembers.com site. Instead we encourage all users to get their PLK or SLK through the MSDN site.
To generate a PLK or SLK click here
To Sign up for the VSX Flash Newsletter
Over the last few months the Visual Studio Gallery has been growing as the one stop shop for Visual Studio Extensions. We launched the Visual Studio Gallery with the release of Visual Studio 2008 and in just three months we’ve gathered 600 extensions. It has been great to see just how well recieved this site has been.
Today we release a new set of needed features that will improve the appeal of the Visual studio Gallery.
· Users can now contribute their own ratings on the quality extensions they’ve tried
· Visitors can optionally provide a detailed review about the extensions.
· We’ve added a Review Tab were visitors can sort through the various reviews on an extension
· The “Was this review helpful” lets other browsers sort credible reviews from the rest
· Authors of an extension now get aggregate information about the ratings of their extension
· Last we jazzed up the category & search results page giving a better summary of the matching extensions
Sign in and start reviewing the extensions you've used so far. This is your chance to define the quality of the extensions on the Gallery and help other visitors sort our good from the not so good.
We have a number of additional features coming online to give users more access to information on the Visual Studio Gallery. Over the next few weeks we’ll be adding:
· Author contributed Tags for extensions
· RSS Feeds for each category
· Tag based RSS feeds
· Improvements to the new Categories list page
· Improved Submission form
As always please send me any feedbak you have!
We setup a set of templates to help authors on the VS Gallery to create compelling entry pages more quickly. Here are some steps on how to use these templates.
1. Click on a template you wish to use:
http://www.visualstudiogallery.com/templates/template1.html
http://www.visualstudiogallery.com/templates/template2.html
http://www.visualstudiogallery.com/templates/template3.html
http://www.visualstudiogallery.com/templates/template4.html
2. Click Ctrl+A to select the complete page and the Ctrl+C to copy this to your clipboard.
3. In the Visual Studio Gallery, click the “New Entry” button on the “My Account” page and use Ctrl+V to paste this into the Long Description of your entry.
4. Replace the placeholder content on the template with your product information.
Just thought I would share a useful tip for the Gallery. You may find that you want to see more than the top 10 newest items or the 10 most viewed items. We'll be adding a more link to the bottom of those in the near future but in the mean time you can see this by using a trick in the search bar.
Enter a space (the actual character space with the space bar) into the search control in the upper right corner of the gallery. Then press the search button. You'll get back a list of all the extensions since all extensions will have a description with a space in it. Now sort this list by the column you are interested in, modified date, number of views, cost category, etc.
I've been looking for the right time to start back up my blog and regularly contribute to it on the projects that I'm currently working on. Well for the last few months I've been heads down on pulling together the Visual Studio Gallery which was announced today on Soma's blog. This release makes for a pretty good time to get back on the blog bandwagon.
I'm really excited to say that we now finally have a single place where all developers can go to find extensions to Visual Studio. The site has everything from community built power toys for VS to industry partner solutions for enterprise development. Any developer can post information about their extensions so if you have an Add-in, package, set of useful project templates, or other installable extensions you think other developers will find useful click on the "My Account" link to add an entry and point to your extension.
There is a lot we want to do with this site. For starters we'll be working on adding in some community trust features like ratings & comments. We're also working on adding in RSS feeds to make it easier to stay on top of the new extensions on the Gallery. There are a number of other features we're working on that I'll talk about in future blogs. If you have suggestions or feedback about features you think would be useful please email me so I can make sure we're considering those when setting our priorities.
For more info about the gallery you can watch the channel 9 video on the Gallery. If you're looking to start building your own extension just visit the VSX dev center for the tools you'll need.
I wanted to take a minute and clarify the difference between Microsoft Visual Studio codename "Orcas" CTPs and "Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP".
Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP
This is a product that can be installed on top of Visual Studio 2005. This product enables Visual Studio 2005 customers to begin developing .NET 3.0 based applications by providing a set of project templates, WPF designer, and WCF services integrated into VS 2005. This product is available as a stop gap to enable .NET 3.0 development until the Microsoft Visual Studio Orcas product is released to manufacturing. Though this product is named November 2006 CTP for consistency with other related releases there will not be any future releases of this product. November 2006 CTP was the last release of this add-on to VS 2005.
It is important to note that this product underwent a name change in November. This will hopefully clarify which product to use in the future but may have provided some initial confusion for existing users. This product has always been codenamed Fidalgo but until November it had previously been publicly named Visual Studio codename "Orcas" development Tools .NET Framework 3.0 CTP. This name was being confused with the product described next and so we changed the name for our final CTP to the name above.
Microsoft Visual Studio codename "Orcas" CTPs
This product is an early look at the next version of the full Visual Studio product This new and upcoming version of Visual Studio will have support for building .NET 2, 3 & 3.5 applications and have a suite of other new features. This release will be a standalone release that will not require VS2005. Microsoft Visual Studio codename "Orcas" CTP will have built in the functionality currently available in VS 2005 + "VS2005 extensions for .NET 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP". As of today Microsoft Visual Studio codename "Orcas" CTP does not have all the functionality available in "VS2005 extensions for .NET 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP" yet.
This product has released a September CTP and will be release periodic ongoing CTPs with varying functionality until it RTMs. When this product RTMs it will replace VS2005 extensions for .NET 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP as the preferred method of developing .NET 3.0 applications and so VS2005 extensions for .NET 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP will be removed from our download servers.
What should you use?
If you are looking to evaluate what features will be in the next version of Visual Studio then you should install Microsoft Visual Studio Codename "Orcas" CTPs. Here you will be able to see where the next version of VS is going.
If you are looking to get up and running with building .NET 3.0 applications quickly then you should install VS2005 extensions for .NET 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP on top of VS 2005.
I hope this helps address some of the confusion between these two products.
Thanks
Anthony
We have shipped our final Fidalgo CTP release under a new name. The new name is "Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP" This new download of Fidalgo works against the RTM of the .NET Framework 3.0. It will not install against any previous versions of the Framework. The .NET Framework 3.0 RTM is a prerequisite as is the Windows Vista SDK and Visual Studio 2005. You can pick up a copy of this last release at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f54f5537-cc86-4bf5-ae44-f5a1e805680d&DisplayLang=en.
This release wraps up the last bug fixes we will address in this series of CTPs for this technologies. It comes under a new name to help understand how to choose between Fidalgo and Orcas. This last release also ships the final CTP of the WPF Designer currently codenamed Cider.
Going forward the future CTPs of Visual Studio codenamed Orcas will integrate the technology available today in Fidalgo. You will find going forward that Orcas will be at par of the technology presented with Fidalgo and eventually supersede it. I encourage you to regularly review the Orcas CTPs to understand how these features will be presented in that release.
The product codenamed Fidalgo has undergone a name change. Fidalgo was previously named "Microsoft Visual Studio Code Name “Orcas” Community Technology Preview - Development Tools for .NET Framework 3.0" and prior to that "Microsoft Visual Studio Code Name “Orcas” Community Technology Preview - Development Tools for WinFX". We originally made this first change from WinFX to .NET Framework 3.0 because the runtime itself had changed names and it was important for us to match that name change.
With the most recent CTP of Fidalgo we have adjusted the name again. The new name is "Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP".
Many questions probably come from this. Let me answer a few of them:
Q:Why did we change the name?
A:We chose the original name because we wanted to communicate to customers that this CTP of ..NETFX3 development tools would be fully available in the next Version of Visual Studio. As the next version of VS started releasing its own CTPs we realized the confusion this would create. This didn't change our charter that customers will be expected to upgrade to Orcas when it ships but we could at least make things easier for the time you do use Fidalgo.
Q:What is the difference between Fidalgo and the WF extensions for VS 2005?
A:Fidalgo only focuses on WCF & WPF. It does not have any features to work with WF. The WF extensions focus exclusively on WF.
Q:Why did Fidalgo go from Development tools for .NET Framework 3.0 to .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF)?
A:Fidalgo always only focused on the WCF & WPF technologies of the .NET FX 3. We just didn't spell it out in the name because it was already long enough. With the new name we felt it was important to distinguish this from the WF extensions for VS 2005 which focus on on WF.
Q:Why do the name change now?
A:This is the last release of the Fidalgo CTP. Any future technology improvements will appear in the next release of Visual Studio which is codenamed Orcas. We wouldn't get another chance to clarify this in the future as more customers began using Fidalgo.
I hope this helps address some of the questions around why we went with this name change and I hope it makes it easier to understand what role Fidalgo serves for you.
Much later than I would have liked but the development tools for the .NET Framework 3.0 are now live on the web. You can download it by going to http://www.Microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=935AABF9-D1D0-4FC9-B443-877D8EA6EAB8&displaylang=en.
Don't forget to download the .NET Framework 3.0 & Windows SDK first.
We are working our butts off over her to get a tool set released that matches the RC1 release of the .NET Framework 3.0. Some unforeseen issues with the features being released along side the .NET Framework 3.0 RC1 are being worked out right now.
I understand that not having a release for the July CTP has left you anxious to get the latest set of tools. We decided to hold the release of these tools because we are excited to get the right product in your hands and hope you'll be understanding for the next couple days while we work these out.
Thank you
Anthony
I just produced my first channel 9 video. The subject is about how to get started with creating an editor using the VS SDK package wizard. Check it out at:
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=215138
Anthony
