Microsoft UK Developer Tools Team

A long overdue update that I’ve been meaning to post for a few weeks. I was lucky enough to get a new laptop (Lenovo W510) a little while ago and as I was going to completely rebuild it I thought I’d try running Windows Server 2008 R2 natively on it,...

I’ve come up to Black Marble to co-present at their From Express to Ultimate event, and was talking to Richard Fennell who has been pleasantly surprised at how easily he was able to get a customers VB 6 projects included in a TFS 2010 build. He’s posted...

On Wednesday 24th November we are delivering three Live Meetings covering various aspects of Visual Studio 2010.  The Live Meetings are free to attend and UK Technical Specialists will be available to answer your questions after each of the sessions...

The Visual Studio 2010 Feature Pack 2 is going to be made available in the next couple of weeks, and will provide enhanced testing support for Silverlight and Firefox: Silverlight 4: · Capture and playback of Action Recordings for Silverlight 4 Applications...

We’re providing an HD live stream from PDC in Redmond on Oct 28th and 29th, so if you’d like to watch PDC sessions in the company of other developers and Microsoft evangelists, join us at the Microsoft Campus at Reading or at one of 8 universities nearer...

If you’re interested or intrigued by WebMatrix then you might want to take a look at a new blog post series one of our colleagues, Rafal Kwiek , has put together to introduce you to this new tool. Cheers, Giles

A quick tip I keep meaning to post. The Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Build Notification is now part of the core product and not a power tool, but you may find that the you want to increase or decrease the polling interval so that your “toast” pops...

Just in case you haven’t seen this link there’s an opportunity to feedback on what should be in Service Pack 1. Here’s Brian Harry’s post: As part of our preparation for Service Pack 1 of VS 2010, we are running a general product satisfaction survey to...

If you’re interested in what each of the Visual Studio 2010 edition offers and would like to understand and discuss which you need then one of our partners, Black Marble , is running a session to demonstrate what each of the different editions contributes...

Interested in how to integrate testing into the application development lifecycle? Wondering how development and testing for cloud based applications works with Visual Studio 2010? Then you may well be interested in this free event. One of our testing...

We’ve got a number of events scheduled for the remainder of the year that cover different aspects of Visual Studio 2010. The list can be found here and we’re planning to run more (and more topics) after these. The LiveMeetings in particular seem to be...

SQS UK , one of our key testing partners in the UK, is offering a 25% discount off the following Microsoft Testing courses for MSDN subscribers. To qualify for the discount please quote reference SQSMSDN25 when booking. MS601ILT , Introduction to Visual...

The support for video recording tests during execution in Microsoft Test Manager has now changed from Microsoft Media Encoder to Microsoft Expression Encoder, and I thought it was about time I made the change myself. The full instructions and background...

I’m presenting at the JAX event on the 29th September, and my session is covering how we can support Java developers, using Eclipse, to share their use of Team Foundation Server with .NET developers. Our solution is Team Explorer Everywhere which provides...

The UK Visual Studio team are running a series of events and Live Meetings on Visual Studio 2010 and Application Lifecycle Management. See below for details and how to sign up. Events Application Lifecycle Management Event Unable to attend...

I’ve been itching to have a go with LightSwitch and the release of Beta 1 seemed a good opportunity to start the process. The first step was to install it into my existing environment. I have Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate installed on my laptop and LightSwitch...

It has been an exciting week with the release of Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management and Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta1 being made available to MSDN Subscribers. Here are some of the questions we have been asked: Q. Do Visual Studio Database Projects support...

Pluralsight have let us know that they are running a public Silverlight 4 course in London from the 27th – 30th September and that there are some places left. This is a 4-day, hands-on course to be delivered by Ian Griffiths . The regular rate is £2,010...

Rich and I were talking about what we’ve found interesting and/or been looking into last week. There were some interesting product announcements; Visual Studio LightSwitch – a brand new product aimed at really helping develop data-centric Line of Business...

Last week we got a sneak preview of the then unnamed Visual Studio LightSwitch and were intrigued by what it could do.  Group PM, Jay Schmelzer has published a very similar demo on Channel9 and it’s well worth a look.  We’re looking forward...

Danny Crone from nFocus has posted about his experience with build retention policies in TFS 2010 – a good reminder to make sure you’re aware of the defaults and understand the retention policies and how they can affect other areas of the project, in...

A new site for ALM related Visual Studio content – looks interesting and should be a good “go to” site. Cheers, Giles

If you’re interested in how Team Foundation Server can support Java (and other) development teams using Eclipse, then you might want to register for a Team Explorer Everywhere seminar being held in Reading on the 8th July. The details and link for registration...

Just a quick “be aware”. These pre-release versions of TFS 2010 will completely stop working on the 30th June – i.e. tomorrow. You need to upgrade to the RTM version but if that’s caught you out then there is a way to extend the product for another 90...

SSW are delivering the Professional Scrum Developer Program (.NET). This is a training course that guides teams on how to turn product requirements into potentially shippable increments of software using Visual Studio 2010, the Scrum framework, and modern...