Come join me and Rob Windsor in 30 minutes for a webcast on how to move your VB6 investments to .NET!

Live From RedBethmond: Migrating Your Visual Basic 6 Investments to .NET

Hope to see you all there. If you can't make it live, the download will be available this evening.

Enjoy!

That's right, I'm doing this one again on April 4th since I got such a great turnout! (Let's hope the recording works this time... grrrrrr)

Live From RedBethmond: VB9 - Working with XML in Visual Basic
4/4/2008 9:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) | Duration:60 Minutes
XML permeates every modern application today from XHTML, XAML, RSS, SOAP, Office Open XML just to name a few. Even your Visual Studio project files and configuration settings are XML files. The latest version of Visual Basic in Visual Studio 2008 supports a new language syntax aimed at making you much more productive when working with XML. In this Webcast we'll walk through language features like XML literals, embedded expressions and axis properties in order to create, query and transform XML with this powerful but easy to use syntax. Say goodbye to XSLT and hello to Visual Basic 9. 

Enjoy!

I'll be delivering a webcast tomorrow morning on LINQ to XML in VB. I'll show lots of cool demos I promice!

Live From RedBethmond: VB9 - Working with XML in Visual Basic
3/21/2008 9:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) | Duration:60 Minutes
XML permeates every modern application today from XHTML, XAML, RSS, SOAP, Office Open XML just to name a few. Even your Visual Studio project files and configuration settings are XML files. The latest version of Visual Basic in Visual Studio 2008 supports a new language syntax aimed at making you much more productive when working with XML. In this Webcast we'll walk through language features like XML literals, embedded expressions and axis properties in order to create, query and transform XML with this powerful but easy to use syntax. Say goodbye to XSLT and hello to Visual Basic 9. 

Hope to see you there!
-B

Today is my one year anniversary here at Microsoft. I can't believe how time flies - it must be because I've had so much fun creating content and engaging with online community this past year. The VB Dev Center has come a long way in that time and I'm excited to be part of a team that really values online community.

Thanks to all the readers of my blog and the encouragement and support you've all given me on the videos, interviews, articles, webcasts, samples and even emails! Even though I can't possibly respond to everyone please know that I do read all of your feedback. And remember to use the forums for general questions, as that will be much more responsive than I can be.

So here at Microsoft it's a tradition to put a pound of candy for each year you have been here outside your door for people to munch on. Since I'm working up in Redmond this week I brought popcorn, licorice and gum drops (I like variety) that I figured added up to a pound. I still have about a pound left!!! Hmmm... next time, chocolate!

Thanks again for all the support from you and thanks to the awesome teams I have worked with this year especially VS, VB and MSDN.

Here's to enjoying another year!

Bill Burrows, Visual Basic MVP has just released a new set of video tutorials on using Excel for business intelligence using the Excel 2007 Data Mining Add-in. Bill has done a lot of tutorials in the past. If you haven't seen them, I also recommend the tutorial series on Programming With XML Using Visual Basic 9.0 and LINQ to SQL. Thanks Bill!

Enjoy!

We added 48 How Do I videos (Forms over data, Windows development, Office development and Security) to the Visual Basic developer Center in addition to adding new download formats for 12 others. This includes audio files, and additional videos files to make these videos as accessible as possible. You can go directly to the How Do I video series main page to see the complete list.

Many thanks to Rob Windsor, Pat Tormey and Steve Hansen for doing these videos. I also have a couple more that I have done that should be up on the site very soon ;-)

Enjoy!

Thanks to all who attended Friday's webcast. Unfortunately VOIP in the new version of Live Meeting isn't what it's cracked up to be. And even though I set up a conference call, a lot of people couldn't dial into the toll-free number from other countries. I apologize, and the rest of the webcasts I'll set up through the phone line like we used to do in the old version.

I heard a lot of great feedback from the people that were on the phone (thanks for the encouraging emails!) so I decided to re-do this one this Friday at 11am PST. Yes, that's right, I'm doing two webcasts in one day because I love you all so much ;-) And if the Live Meeting gods are mean to me again, I'll just create a series of How-Do-I videos!

Here's all the new details (and I've updated the previous announcements about it with the new information):

Live From Redmond: VB9 - Introduction to LINQ in Visual Basic
3/14/2008 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) | Duration:60 Minutes
LINQ stands for Language Integrated Query and it allows you to query over things like objects, databases and XML in a standard way with a new syntax available in the latest versions of Visual Basic and C#. In this Webcast you will learn how to get started writing LINQ queries using the simple but powerful query syntax available in Visual Basic. We'll walk through a variety of basic queries as well look at aggregates and groups over different data sources. You will also see how writing queries over XML using specific Visual Basic syntax like XML literals and axis properties can help you be much more productive when working with XML.

I'll be delivering a webcast tomorrow morning on an intro to LINQ in VB. If you're lost or just want to get started with it, join me and come see what it's all about.

Live From RedBethmond: VB9 - Introduction to LINQ in Visual Basic
3/7/2008 9:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 3/7/2008 10:00 AM | Duration:60 Minutes
LINQ stands for Language Integrated Query and it allows you to query over things like objects, databases and XML in a standard way with a new syntax available in the latest versions of Visual Basic and C#. In this Webcast you will learn how to get started writing LINQ queries using the simple but powerful query syntax available in Visual Basic. We'll walk through a variety of basic queries as well look at aggregates and groups over different data sources. You will also see how writing queries over XML using specific Visual Basic syntax like XML literals and axis properties can help you be much more productive when working with XML. 

Hope to see you there!
-B

I just posted a Channel 9 interview with Todd Apley, Senior Test Lead on the VB Team, where he shows us a variety of tips and tricks with using the Interop Forms Toolkit on Visual Studio 2008. He also shows us how to deploy a hybrid application built with VB 6 and VB.NET using XCopy deployment and RegFree-COM.
 
Todd will also be posting follow-up information on the VB Team blog.

Also, check out articles on this blog on interop as well as the rest of the VB Team Interviews on Channel 9.

Enjoy!