July, 2007

(This is part 3 of the Paint-by-Numbers series) There are four issues I want to deal with in this post: New, Open, Save (As), and Exit. I’ll be doing these in order, but all of them depend on knowing whether or not the application is dirty, so I’ll...

(This is the fourth and final part of the Paint-by-Numbers series) Late last year, some clever guys on our Visual Basic team released the PrintForm component on the web. The idea behind the PrintForm component was to make printing and previewing your...

Now that you know our team, it is time to get down to the real meat - we are building software here, so let’s talk about software. As I promised to keep you up to date with what is going on here at Microsoft, I decided to start a series of blog posts...

(This is the second part in my series on creating a Paint-by-Numbers designer application.) This is the first application that I’ve built specifically for this blog, where I’m actually writing the code while I’m writing the blog. (For example, the...

This example is intended as a ‘primer’ for following recipes (so we don’t repeat the same instructions multiple times). This recipe takes you through everything you need, and assumes only that you've installed Visual Studio (and in so doing, you've installed...

I spent the last few weeks using VB, and I kept thinking things such as “Wow, this is really awesome, I wish all other languages had that!” or “I’m sure there is an easier way to do this”. I simply can’t help it - just as with any other language, when...

Ingredients: - Visual Studio 2008 (Beta2 or Higher) - Connection to Northwind database Categories: LINQ-To-Objects, LINQ-To-SQL Instructions: · Create a new Windows Forms project with a Northwind DataContext (for step-by-step instructions...

Ingredients: - Visual Studio 2008 (Beta2 or Higher) Categories: LINQ-To-Objects, LINQ and WinForms Instructions: Open Visual Studio 2008, and Click ‘File/New Project’. Create a new Windows Forms Application project From the...

I hate going so long without blogging, but it’s getting really busy around here as we get closer to the endgame for Visual Studio 2008. That, combined with “review time,” creates a bit of a problem for writing apps for the blog, and I wasn’t able to give...

Hooray! Visual Basic 2008 Beta2 has been released to the wild today to return to its natural habitat – the desktops of our beloved customers. (Please note our smiling GPM's face on that landing page -- he's so happy the Beta is done.) What’s inside...

For previous articles in the series please see Part 1: Introduction Part 2: Method Calls Part 3: Scope Part 4: Variable Lifetime Once again sorry for the long delay between posts. Looping structures can cause unintended consequences...

Here’s a link to a post I just finished on ‘How to implement IQueryable’ (create a custom Linq provider). http://blogs.msdn.com/kevin_halverson/archive/2007/07/10/how-to-implement-iqueryable.aspx My example project allows you to query the Windows...

I just posted a couple screen casts/interviews on Channel9 you should definitely check out. I rounded up VB team members and influentials and asked them what their favorite Visual Studio 2008 features were and to give us all a demo of them! The first...

If you haven't seen or experienced Second Life it's pretty amazing. It's an online, 3D, digital world. Visual Studio has created an island where you can come listen to live Microsoft presenters in this virtual world's live presentation theater! Amanda...

The VB team thanks everyone who attended Cameron's webcast on Performance Improvements in Visual Studio 2008 this morning. If you missed it, you can click this link for the on-demand replay . I've attached his slides that he used in the webcast for your...

On Friday, Chris Smith and I (Chris is a test engineer on the VB Team) attended an event called 'Sons and Daughters' day. The day consisted of 2 sessions (20-25 kids in each) where kids aged 6-13 were run through a class of writing an app in VB (20-25...

If you get a chance, you should check out the August 2007 edition of MSDN Magazine. In addition to its usual array of awesome goodies, this month's edition features a super cool Basic Instincts column, written by me. In it I discuss the design of Query...

Hello, dear readers! It has been another exciting week, so here is the second intern post :) New Team Members Let me first introduce to you the other two members of our team. They are also interns, and the three of us are going to be working...

Amanda Silver gave a great webcast Tuesday morning on LINQ to XML (if you missed it, just click the link and view it on-demand). Here is the deck she used . Happy LINQing! - Beth Massi , Program Manager VS Community

I posted a couple more videos on Channel9 that you'll definitely want to check out! Thanks again to Kathleen for helping with the production. The first one Kit George walks us through some of his favorite VB9 language features that enable LINQ: ...

We just had to reschedule Cameron's Wednesday Live From Redmond: VB9 - Performance Improvements in Visual Studio 2008 talk for Tuesday July 24th . If you're already registered then you're good to go and automated emails should have been sent out to notify...