In this episode, Jason Zander joins us to celebrate the availability of Visual Studio 2012 Release Candidate . Jason shows off a number of features that have been added to Visual Studio since Beta, including IDE updates Web site optimization...

In this episode, Kael Rowan of Microsoft Research joins us and shows the Debugger Canvas. Debugger Canvas is a power tool for Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate that pulls together the code you're exploring onto a single pan-and-zoom display. As you hit breakpoints...

This episode is the last in the 4 part Visual Studio Toolbox series on getting started building and designing Metro style apps. Previously , I showed how to use Visual Studio 11 and XAML to start building Metro style apps for Windows 8. In this episode...

Previously on Visual Studio Toolbox, I showed how to use Visual Studio 11 and JavaScript to start building Metro style apps for Windows 8. In this episode, Kirupa Chinnathambi shows us how to use Blend for Visual Studio to create good looking apps. He...

Previously on Visual Studio Toolbox, I showed how to use Visual Studio 11 and XAML to start building Metro style apps for Windows 8. In this episode, I show you how to use JavaScript, demonstrating each of the three project templates Visual Studio provides...

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview has been available for download for about a month now and if you haven't started building Metro style apps, now is a good time. In this episode, I take a look at how you can use Visual Studio 11 to start building Metro style...

In this episode, Erik Ejlskov Jensen joins us. Erik is a SQL Server Compact MVP and the author of the SQL Server Compact Toolbox add-in, which has been downloaded more than 100,000 times! If you are using SQL Server Compact in an application, you will...

When you view offline help in Visual Studio, you use the Help Viewer. In this episode, Paul O'Rear shows us some significant and welcome improvements to the Help Viewer in Visual Studio 11, including Default install of a minimum level of documentation...

In this episode, Sam Zaiss and Dan Dole of the Visual Studio User Experience team join us to talk about simplification and reduction in the Visual Studio 11 development environment. They show how much easier it is to navigate both within code and within...

I neglected to post these when they went live, so here is a catchup post. Episode 27: Visual Studio 11 Beta with Jason Zander went live on February 29, which is the day Visual Studio 11 Beta was made publicly available. Jason showed off and discussedsome...

In this episode , Mads Kristensen returns to show extensions he wrote to make Web development easier. Mads shows us what's new in the Image Optimizer and how the Web Essentials extension provides a number of features that help you write Web apps faster...

In this episode, Rowan Miller and Diego Vega return for Part 2 of our deep dive into the Entity Framework. In Part 1 , they showed the following workflows available in Entity Framework 4.2: Code First, Model First, Database First, and Code First with...

In this episode , I am joined by Karsten Januszewski introduces us to Visual Studio Achievements. Once you install this extension, you can unlock achievements based on things you do in Visual Studio such as loading custom settings, organizing usings,...

In this episode , I am joined by Rowan Miller and Diego Vega of the Entity Framework team. They discuss and demo code first, database first, and model first—the three primary Entity Framework workflows—and give some tips on when to use each...

In this episode , I am joined by my colleague and good friend Brian Keller, who shows how manual testers can use Microsoft Test Manager 2010 to manage their test cases. They can document all of the steps they will use to test a particular feature or requirement...

In this short episode to end the year, I highlight the Online Training Courses and Offline Training Kits I and my DPE colleagues produce. I focus on two that I own—one for Visual Studio 2010 and one for Visual Studio 11 —and show that you...

In this episode , I show how to use the profiling tools in Visual Studio Premium and Ultimate to identify performance issues in your applications. You'll see two profiling methods: Sampling and Instrumentation. Sampling collects data on the CPU methods...

Backward compatibility of projects and solutions has always been a tricky issue for developers. Previously, if you built a solution in Visual Studio 2008 and opened it in Visual Studio 2010, you were presented with the Visual Studio Conversion Wizard...

There are a number of third-party vendors providing tools you can use to enhance your productivity when developing with Visual Studio. Recently, I sat down with three of them: DevExpress (makers of CodeRush), JetBrains (makers of ReSharper), and Telerik...

There are a number of third-party vendors providing tools you can use to enhance your productivity when developing with Visual Studio. Recently, I sat down with three of them: DevExpress (makers of CodeRush), JetBrains (makers of ReSharper), and Telerik...

There are a number of third-party vendors providing tools you can use to enhance your productivity when developing with Visual Studio. Recently, I sat down with three of them: DevExpress (makers of CodeRush), JetBrains (makers of ReSharper), and Telerik...

In this episode , I look at how you can analyze your code to see if it meets coding standards. Standards are made up of rules and Visual Studio includes about 200 rules organized into rule sets. If you are using Visual Studio Premium or Ultimate, you...

In this episode I am joined by Mark Miller (live in the studio) and Rory Becker (live via GoToMeeting) of DevExpress. They build a plug-in that enforces naming conventions. We use the GizmoBall solution that I used in the first two episodes of Visual...

In this episode , I review the Visual Studio Start page, showing how to configure it so that it automatically appears (or doesn't) as well as how to customize the RSS feed that appears on the Latest News tab. Since the Start page is XAML and can be customized...

Previously on Visual Studio Toolbox, I showed how to use LINQ to XML to query data from Web sites. In this episode, I show how to use LINQ to XML to write XML. I start with a simple example that stores personal settings in an XML file, and then retrieves...