Kathleen McGrath's Weblog

I recently videotaped Paul O’Rear, Program Manager on the Library Experience team, as he described the changes to the Microsoft Help Viewer planned for Visual Studio SP1. He demonstrates the new functionality of the viewer in an early build of Help Viewer...

Mick Alberts and I have created a series of getting started videos for Visual Basic and C#.  The first set of videos correspond to the getting started tutorial: Tutorial 1: Create a Picture Viewer .  If you’re new to Visual Basic or C# development...

When the Lightweight view of the MSDN Library was first released, there wasn’t a version selector as there was in classic view .   The MSDN Library Experience team recently released a new version selector in the Lightweight view of the MSDN Library...

If you’ve used the Help content in the MSDN Library using Lightweight view, you’re probably familiar with the tabbed code block interface. These tabbed code blocks enable you to easily switch between code examples in various programming languages by clicking...

If you’ve installed the Visual Studio 2010 help content locally on your computer, you may have noticed that there is no Index. Visual Studio 2010 Help is a browser-based Help system that enables you to navigate to the help content through the table of...

I'm at Tech-Ed this week collecting feedback on the Visual Studio 2010 documentation. Stop by and see us near the Visual Studio (or p&p) booth and tell us what you think! You can also give feedback about earlier versions of the documentation, or take...

Have you visited the MSDN Library lately? There’s a new default view applied to the Library content that is known as the “Lightweight view.” This is a slimmed down view that has the following features: Flattened Table of Contents . Instead of having several...

In this introductory video, you will learn about the Visual Studio 2010 code generation features that enable testers to create coded UI tests. Watch the video: Introduction to Creating Coded UI Tests with Visual Studio 2010 This video is based...

Brian Keller has posted information on downloading a virtual machine containing Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Beta 2, Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2, along with sample data and a series of hands-on labs (HOLs) to get you started with the...

In the following videos, programming writer Steve Stein demonstrates the new drag and drop data binding features in Visual Studio 2010 for working with Silverlight applications. See the video: Silverlight Object Binding in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and...

In this video, Ryan Linton (a Senior Program Manager on the Library Experience Team), walks us through a demo on how to enable Help in the Visual Studio 2010 Isolated Shell. Watch the video: Enabling Help in the Visual Studio 2010 Shell (Isolated)...

I’m at PDC in Los Angeles this week, collecting feedback about the Visual Studio and .NET Framework documentation. Between handing out surveys, I’m interviewing customers about how they find the help they need. So far, just about everyone I’ve talked...

In this video interview, Gordon Hogenson explains lists in F# and demos the functionality. You can also learn more in the topic Lists (F#) . See the video: Lists in F# --Kathleen

I interviewed Mark D’Urso, a Senior Development Lead on the Library Experience team, about the new views available in the MSDN Library: Lightweight view ScriptFree view Classic view Watch the video: New MSDN Library Views -...

I recently interviewed Ryan Linton, a Senior Program Manager on the Library Experience team, about the new Help system in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2. He demonstrates the new browser-based Help viewer, and how you can update content locally. Watch the...

In this video interview, Gordon Hogenson explains discriminated unions in F# and demos the functionality. You can also learn more in the topic Discriminated Unions (F#) See the video: Discriminated Unions in F# --Kathleen

In Part II of my interview with Norm Estabrook, he shows us how to create a Web Part using Visual Studio. This demo is based on his Help topic: Walkthrough: Creating a Web Part for SharePoint by Using a Designer . See the video: Creating a Web Part...

Mick Alberts, a technical editor on the Visual Studio User Education team, created a video demo about embedding type information into an application that uses Automation objects from Microsoft Office. This video is based on a Visual Studio Help topic...

With the release of Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2, I continue showing you new features by interviewing writers on User Education team. Since I’m at the SharePoint conference, it seems fitting to start out with a SharePoint demo. In this video, Norm Estrabrook...

Help us improve the developer documentation by taking the Visual Studio and .NET Framework Content Survey .  This survey will give us a better understanding of the type of applications you are developing as well as how you use Help and how we can...

In this video demo, I show you how to add text to a document and then convert it to a table, without using all sixteen parameters that are possible with the ConvertToTable method.  See the Video: How to Use Named and Optional Arguments in Office...

As a continuation of featuring data binding in WPF, this is part 2 of an interview with McLean Schofield, a programming writer on the Visual Studio User Education team. In this interview, he demonstrates the steps in his Help topic on how to bind WPF...

This week’s featured topic is Lambda Expressions in C++ . I interviewed Thomas Petchel, a programming writer on the Visual Studio User Education team, who describes the new Lambda Expressions in C++ and demonstrates how to use them instead of using function...

This week, I’m featuring the topic Walkthrough: Copying a document to the end user computer after a ClickOnce Installation of an Office solution . As a continuation of an earlier interview, programming writer Mary Lee demonstrates how to deploy an Office...

As a continuation of featuring patterns in F#, this is part 2 of an interview with programming writer, Gordon Hogenson. In this interview he describes Active Patterns , which can be used to customize and extend F#’s pattern matching capabilities. ...