Beth Massi - Sharing the goodness that is VB : Videos

Rate and Ask Questions on How Do I Videos on the VB Dev Center

Beth Massi — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 03:50:00 GMT

“How Do I” Videos have been an incredibly popular free training for Visual Studio developers for a couple years now. Today MSDN launched a pilot on the Visual Basic Developer Center’s “How Do I” Videos that allows you to rate them and add comments. Sweet!

Click the 1 to 5 star rating above the video player to rate the video (1 is bad, 5 is excellent). You can also make comments about the video directly here instead of having to go to Code Gallery or contacting the authors directly. Comments are displayed at the bottom of the page for each video:

I know a lot of you email me directly on questions about the videos I’ve done and I try to respond to them all, but the sheer volume of questions (video related or otherwise) is way too much for just me to answer individually. The forums are much more responsive than me alone for general programming questions. I promise you that I absolutely do read them all though! And I use your common questions and suggestions to feed into topics I blog about here so please keep that coming. :-)

However, by adding comments on the video pages directly I’m hoping that others in the community will also help each other instead of just relying on me. It also helps focus the conversations better around a specific video topic. Of course, I’ll be monitoring all the comments on the Visual Basic How Do I videos and I’ll try to answer them quickly, but having a more open conversation will not only help me, it will help all of you too. It’s always more helpful to see how other developers find solutions to problems in an open forum like this.

So… let ‘er rip! I’m sure you’ll flood all the pages with a plethora of comments :-). Please note that I’ll be out of the office for the extended Labor Day weekend here in the states but I’ll respond when I get back to the office on Tuesday.

Enjoy!

New “How Do I” Videos Released on Entity Framework & WPF

Beth Massi — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:18:08 GMT

Yesterday we released a couple more videos onto the Visual Basic Developer Center on building WPF data-entry forms with Entity Framework:

That makes 5 videos total on working with EF in WPF applications. Others released previously:

These videos are based on articles I’ve posted here in the past. So if you like reading better that watching videos here you go:

There are also additional resources listed on the How Do I video pages themselves pointing to topics in the MSDN Library.

Enjoy!

New “How Do I” Video Series Released

Beth Massi — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:28:50 GMT

I just released 3 new videos onto the VB Dev Center starting a new series on how to do WPF data binding with Entity Framework using Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1. This is a “no frills” WPF series that focuses on data so you won’t see any other tools used besides Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and no flashy animations.

#1 | How Do I: Get Started with Entity Framework in WPF Applications?

#2 | How Do I: Build a WPF Data Entry Form Using Entity Framework?

#3 | How Do I: Create a WPF Lookup Combobox using Entity Framework?

The videos are a bit longer than your normal 5-minute “How Do I” videos but I tried to keep them short by re-using the data access layer I build in the first one. I hope this doesn’t confuse people. Believe me when I say this will get a lot better, especially tooling-wise, in Visual Studio 2010. But this is a good introduction to building WPF data apps against Entity Framework with the version of Visual Studio that is available now! :-)

Enjoy!

How We Do It: Building the Visual Studio Product Line

Beth Massi — Fri, 22 May 2009 17:46:40 GMT

Ever wonder how we build Visual Studio and the .NET Framework? I mean literally. You know, the build process that spits out a product at the other end? Well I sure did and it's not just hitting F5 people ;-).

In this interview I sit down with Matt Gertz, frequent VB blogger and also the guy in charge of the builds in Developer Division (he has a long title, but I forget what it is :-)). He explains how the build and test processes work on a team of two thousand people all on Team Foundation Server. I must say it's pretty darn impressive. Many thanks to Matt for taking time out of his busy schedule to do this interview!

How We Do It: Building the Visual Studio Product Line

Enjoy!

dnrTV: More Fun with Office and XML Literals

Beth Massi — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:33:00 GMT

Yesterday Carl posted another dnrTV show with yours truly. This is a follow up from the last show where I went over the Open XML SDK and LINQ to XML in order to manipulate and query Office documents. Last show focused on CustomXML parts and Word content controls. In this show I demonstrate how to create Word and Excel docs from database data using XML Literals.

dnrTV Show #137: Beth Massi on the Open XML SDK
dnrTV Show #138: Beth Massi on Open XML and Office

Here are some links to check out from the shows:

And here's the source code for the demos I showed.

Enjoy!

Channel 9 Interview: No More Underscores in Visual Basic 10!

Beth Massi — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:11:20 GMT

I just posted a new Channel 9 interview on a nifty little feature which isn't so little when you look at it from the compiler. In this interview, Tyler Whitney, a developer on the Visual Basic compiler team demonstrates how line termination has changed in the Visual Basic 10 compiler making underscores unnecessary as line continuation indicators. Woot!

This makes your code more readable especially when writing multi-line LINQ queries. It's also really handy not to have to worry about them when writing multi-line lambdas, a new feature of Visual Basic 10. Check out Tyler's blog post that explains the details.

Yes it's true, many underscores are unemployed so the team has created a support group for them at www.unemployedunderscores.com :-)

Enjoy!

Channel 9 Interview: WPF Improvements in VS2010 for Business Apps

Beth Massi — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:01:08 GMT

I just posted an interview on Channel 9 on WPF Improvements in Visual Studio 2010 for Building Business Apps.

At the MVP Summit a few weeks ago, Italian MVP Alessandro del Sole was so excited about the new WPF features in Visual Studio 2010 that he asked me if he could interview Milind Lele himself to get the low-down -- I said sure!

Milind is a Program Manager on the Visual Studio Pro Tools team. In this interview he chats with Alessandro about the new WPF improvements in Visual Studio 2010 for building business applications. This time Milind shows off the new Visual Studio UI and the new WPF data grid as he quickly builds a master-details form against an Entity Data Model using the new RAD drag-drop data binding features for WPF.

Also check out Milind's blog post on this topic for more information.

Enjoy!

Channel 9 Interview: Using the Touchless SDK with Visual Basic

Beth Massi — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:31:12 GMT

I just posted a new interview on Channel 9 on using the Touchless SDK.

The Touchless SDK enables developers to create multi-touch based applications using a webcam for input. "Touch without touching." It's actually pretty cool! In this interview I meet up with Touchless SDK creator, Mike Wasserman and Visual Basic Spec Lead, Lucian Wischik. They explain the project and show off a game they developed using Visual Basic 9 in Visual Studio 2008. I almost got my block knocked off playing the game but you'll see how it was worth it ;-)

For additional information mentioned in the video check out:

Touchless SDK: http://touchless.codeplex.com/
SDK Video: http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=a89a217b-fc38-4a6c-87f8-ab59a2028391
VB Game Source code: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/vbtouchless
VB Team Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam
VB Dev Center: http://msdn.com/vbasic
Office Labs: http://www.officelabs.com/

Enjoy!

Channel 9 Interview: ASP.NET MVC using Visual Basic XML Literals

Beth Massi — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:20:40 GMT

I just posted an interview on Channel 9 with Dmitry Robsman, the Product Unit Manager for ASP.NET. In this interview he shows us how he implemented ASP.NET MVC views using Visual Basic's XML Literals instead of .aspx pages. Dmitry shows us how this makes coding the views much cleaner using standard OOP principals. He also makes some very interesting observations about DSLs and Visual Basic XML literals. You can download the code Dmitry shows in the interview from his blog here.

Enjoy!

WPF Drag-Drop Data Binding on dnrTV & WPF Business App Resources

Beth Massi — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 02:03:34 GMT

I'm still catching up from holiday vacation so I just watched my dnrTV episode today that I filmed with Carl when I saw him at DevTeach in Montreal last month. I always enjoy interviewing with Carl. He has a way of making you feel comfortable and making you look maaaavelous in an interview.

In this episode I show a new feature of Visual Studio 2010 related to drag-drop data binding for WPF. I start by building a teeny WPF form from scratch in Visual Studio 2008 and hooking up the bindings manually (similar to how I do it in the WPF Forms over Data Videos). Then I show how to create a Master-Detail form in WPF using drag-drop data binding which saves a ton of time because all of the controls and bindings and data load code is generated for you, similar to what we have now in Winforms. It's one of the RAD features you would expect be in the Visual Studio box -- and it is in VS2010.

Here's some more resources on WPF Drag-Drop Data Binding and Visual Studio 2010 and the Program Manager, Milind Lele, in charge of the feature:

Here's how you can get the CTP and a fix for the VPC expiration issue:

If you can't wait for Visual Studio 2010 (who can!?) to start jumping into WPF for business applications, check out these resources:

Feel free to post a comment to this post if you find more WPF Business Application resources out there.

Enjoy!

New WPF "How Do I" Video on Formatting Data Entry

Beth Massi — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:18:01 GMT

We just released a new How Do I Video onto the VB Dev Center on how to format controls on data entry forms using the IValueConverter like I showed in a previous post. The IValueConverter allows you full control over the display of the data as well as the editing of that data by users in the controls.

Check out all the WPF Forms over Data videos here.

Enjoy!

New WPF How Do I Videos Released!

Beth Massi — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 21:50:05 GMT

I posted two more WPF "Forms over Data" videos onto the Developer Center that you should check out.

How Do I: Edit Tabular Data in WPF? - learn how to create a simple data grid in WPF for editing tabular data using Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1.

How Do I: Create a Master-Detail Data Entry Form in WPF? - learn how to create a master-detail (or one-to-many) data entry form in WPF using Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1.

Subscribe to the How Do I video feed.

Enjoy!

ASP.NET Dynamic Data Tutorials

Beth Massi — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 23:41:04 GMT

Bill Burrows has released more video tutorials! This time he focuses on the ASP.NET Dynamic Data feature that is available in Visual Studio 2008 SP1. If you need to build a quick web site against a database then you should definitely check this framework out.

Also check out the Web Development section of the Visual Basic Learning page for more VB ASP.NET videos.

Enjoy!

Silverlight 2 How Do I Videos

Beth Massi — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:26:49 GMT

If you're interested in learning about Silverlight, check out the How Do I videos on Silverlight 2, which include managed code examples in both Visual Basic and C#. All you need to get started building Silverlight applications is here on the Get Started page of www.silverlight.net. There are also a lot of great articles, tutorials and samples so check them out. Also check out Tim Heuer's blog for excellent information on Silverlight.

If you like what you see, bookmark it. ;-)

Enjoy!

Beth Massi - Sharing the goodness that is VB : Videos

Rate and Ask Questions on How Do I Videos on the VB Dev Center

New “How Do I” Videos Released on Entity Framework & WPF

New “How Do I” Video Series Released

How We Do It: Building the Visual Studio Product Line

dnrTV: More Fun with Office and XML Literals

Channel 9 Interview: No More Underscores in Visual Basic 10!

Channel 9 Interview: WPF Improvements in VS2010 for Business Apps

Channel 9 Interview: Using the Touchless SDK with Visual Basic

Channel 9 Interview: ASP.NET MVC using Visual Basic XML Literals

WPF Drag-Drop Data Binding on dnrTV & WPF Business App Resources

New WPF "How Do I" Video on Formatting Data Entry

New WPF How Do I Videos Released!

ASP.NET Dynamic Data Tutorials

Silverlight 2 How Do I Videos

More Videos on ASP.NET MVC