We’re going to have a Game Hackathon tomorrow at the Microsoft Office here in Tampa. For a little diversion, during this Hackathon I’m going to create a little Windows Phone 8 game. All I need is a game loop sample to get me started. I...

I finally found the code I created when I ported Mike Snow's Silverlight snowflake "game" into a Windows 8 C#/XAML "game." See http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jimblizzard/archive/2012/05/21/porting-a-simple-silverlight-game-loop-to-windows-8-metro-style.aspx...

This summer I had the chance to work on a Windows 8 Store reference app with a few of my colleagues at Microsoft. The opportunity to sling a little code and work with some world-class developers was too good to pass up. This is the first in a series of...

The other evening I went on the hunt for a XAML/C#-based example of a game loop. I ran into a couple of OLD blog posts by Mike Snow . Naturally it caught my eye, simply because of his last name. In his posts he described game loop based on Silverlight...

The slides and hands-on labs materials (both JavaScript and C#) are now available for download. Trot on over to http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29854 Happy Windows 8 developing! --bliz (@snowstormlife)

My Orlando Windows 8 Dev Camp co-presenter, Dave Isbitski, has written an excellent post about it . Bottom line, today you need an invite “token” to register . So how do you get one? Take a look a Dave’s post . --bliz

Yesterday I blogged about the live webcast series on Windows 8 Metro style development that’s currently underway. Today I want to make sure you’re aware that we have a Metro Accelerator Lab coming up at the end of May here in Tampa . Joe...

. . . But wish you could? You’re in luck! Microsoft is going to be delivering the content via webcasts, beginning TODAY (May 14) at 11:30 AM Eastern. Too late for today’s session. Here is the session list via Jamie . Good lunchtime feasting...

Looking for a little Visual Studio 11 action? If so, you’re going to be in heaven for the next two months. Check out this list of live webcasts during May and June. EVENT NAME DATE REGISTER Scrum...

Have all the Metro style apps and samples that you’ve created all gotten a disease of little X’s in the lower right corner of every tile, like an outbreak of the chicken pox? What the …? And if you try to launch one of the...

Do you have what it takes to create a world-class Metro style app? Would you like to have your app available in the Windows store on “Day 0”? If you do and you live in Florida , shoot an email to me ( jim.blizzard@microsoft.com ) or Joe...

During one of my sessions from the Windows 8 Developer Camp I talked about how easy it is for current .NET developers to write Windows 8 Metro style apps. One slide in particular showed how easy it is to interact with devices, etc., through the Windows...

The Windows Store blog has an important post on deploying Metro style Windows 8 apps to businesses. Very much worth reading – twice. From the blog post : When it comes to building a Metro style app for business users, the first thing you...

At the Windows 8 Developer Camp last week in Ft. Lauderdale, a couple of people asked me if there’s a way to control which apps are searchable (which ones show up in the app search list), and which apps are allowed to be share targets . The answer...

Here’s your must-have list of sites regarding Visual Studio 11 Beta. The Visual Studio team blog. If you see a post and have questions, want to make a comment, or provide feedback, post it in the comments section: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio...

If you haven't already heard the news, take a look at Jason's blog , Soma's blog , the Visual Studio team blog , and the Visual Studio product website . The Visual Studio 11 Beta will be here on February 29! The fun is about to begin! Enjoy!...

Let ‘em know that the Microsoft TechEd Europe session list has been posted here: http://europe.msteched.com/Sessions . Where & When? Amsterdam on June 26 – 29. I’ve never been to Europe. . . Anyone want to sponsor me? :...

In case you haven't already heard the news. You can download it from here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27738 Enjoy! bliz

If you’re trying out some WCF programming, there’s a nice little WCF test client available for you to use, aptly named WcfTestClient.exe. To run it, the MSDN documentation tells you to navigate to the “%SystemDrive%\Program Files...

Many developers who first start working with Team Foundation Server find it easy to get wrapped around the axle when it comes to TFS Workspaces. They’re not very intuitive. The simple explanation I give about workspaces when asked, is that they’re a mapping...

In yet another instance of getting real, I just swapped out the backend database for SnowstormLife.com to a SQL Azure Database. (The website itself is still on a 3rd party host, not on Windows Azure yet.) It wasn’t that difficult. I simply needed to Create...

I just found out about the Visual Studio UserVoice site, located here: http://visualstudio.uservoice.com . From the site: Welcome to the Visual Studio UserVoice site. Let us know what you would like to see in future versions of the Visual Studio suite...

A client asked me how to create and run Visual Studio web performance tests using something other than Internet Explorer. (His web app only runs in a particular browser, and it’s not IE.) Here’s my answer. Recording a web performance test using a browser...

Jason Zander just posted a blog entry about the ALM roadmap for Visual Studio vNext. Read and enjoy . -- bliz

If you’re into performance testing – and who isn’t these days? – and you haven’t downloaded the Visual Studio Performance Testing Quick Reference Guide , then you’re really missing out. Stop reading this blog post and...