Brad McCabe's WebLog : MSDN Flash

New LINQ Preview Bits Released

Brad_McCabe — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 04:24:00 GMT

The VB team has release a new version of the LINQ preview bits. You can download the January preview and check out the latest MSDN TV episode on link at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/Future/default.aspx.

For those of you unsure of what LINQ is, it is new technology that was announced at PDC last year that will be part of the next version of Visual Basic. Check out the link above for lots of information on both LINQ and the next version of Visual Basic.

Register Now for the MIX '06 Conference in Las Vegas

Brad_McCabe — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 00:44:00 GMT

This sounds like a cool event for web developers, here is the marketing blurb:

Attend the MIX conference, a LIVE! conversation between web developers, designers and business leaders, being held in Las Vegas from March 20 - 22 at the Venetian hotel with Bill Gates and Tim O’Reilly.

Click here for more information or to register.

Note that is Bill Gates and Tim O’Reilly, the publishing and open standards guy. Not to be confused with the Fox News guy Bill O’Reilly

Visual Studio 2005 and SQL 2005 Released

Brad_McCabe — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 19:52:00 GMT

Visual Studio 2005 (Standard, Pro, and Express versions) and SQL Server 20005 has been released and are avaialbe for download for MSDN subscribers.

For a good overview of the new features in Visual Basic 2005 check out Ken Getz's article. For more in depth information you can find a collection of VB 2005 articles here. For SQL information visit the SQL Dev Center 2005 page.

For those of you that are not MSDN subscribers you can either purchase an MSDN subscription or the bits will go on sale from resellers after the November 7th launch event.

Ready - Launch Tour 2005

Brad_McCabe — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 23:35:00 GMT

November 7th and the launch of Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, and BizTalk 2006 is getting close. If you are looking to learn about any of these products but have been unable to convince your boss to send you to the global launch event in San Francisco don’t worry. The launch team will be traveling the global to 50 countries for a 90 city tour. Register at www.microsoft.com/launchtour2005/.

Kid Programming Language (KPL)

Brad_McCabe — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 22:37:00 GMT

There is a new article out about KPL, or the Kid Programming Language.

This is a really neat idea that is being supported by Microsoft and was recently featured on the Coding4Fun site on MSDN.

I have played with this some and the syntax is very much like Visual Basic however the IDE it comes with is much simpler and targeted at young kids.

My oldest son has just turned six so this might be a bit to advance for him in a few years I can see real possibilities in our household.

If you have kids, or are just curious check out the free download.

Wanted, Dead or Alive!

Brad_McCabe — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 02:33:00 GMT

Ok, got your attention with the title. The Code Snippet team has started a discussion on the MSDN Forums asking folks to submit there most request code snippet.

If you are not familiar with code snippets in 2005 check out the Code Snippet FAQ.

While VB will be shipping with hundreds of code snippets in the box we are looking for your feedback to build out more to make you more productive. Let us know what you need or want.

Free Training CD from AppDev

Brad_McCabe — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 00:55:00 GMT

Even more great offers. Microsoft and AppDev, a leading developer training company, have partnered to give away a free ASP.NET 2.0 using Visual Basic 2005 Beta 2 Training CD or ASP.NET 2.0 using C# 2005 Beta 2 CD.

From the AppDev web site:
“See why thousands of developers nationwide have voted AppDev training THE BEST! Get a
free training CD taken directly from one of our award-winning courses -- you'll get 3 hours
of training, a $95 value! Choose a CD from our NEW Exploring ASP.NET 2.0 Using Visual C#
BETA 2 course, or choose VB.NET, C# .NET, or SQL Server.”

Free ASP.NET Learning Challenges for Visual Basic .NET Developers

Brad_McCabe — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 00:45:00 GMT

If you have not already heard, InnerWorkings is providing a collection of ASP.NET learning challenges for Visual Basic .NET developers. InnerWorkings offers migration resources for VB developers – FREE to MSDN users for a limited time!

You also get 3 technical articles and an eBook on VB .NET from Paul D. Sheriff & Associates.

C++ 2005 Express and Half Life Moding

Brad_McCabe — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 00:42:00 GMT

I have never been a big computer gamer, that is why I have an XBox, but this announcement yesterday is pretty neat.

Numerous folks here at Microsoft have been working with Valve, the creators of Half Life and Counter-Strike, to make Visual C++ 2005 Express work for creating mods and enhancements to their games.

Check out the new Half Life 2 Mod Corner on Coding 4Fun for more details.

Free eLearning and Book Chapters

Brad_McCabe — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 20:32:00 GMT

When your whole life is all about Visual Studio, sometimes it's easy to get a little too heads-down and forget that there are some integrated technologies that you're going to need to know and use. So today, take a few minutes to learn about Indigo and SQL Server 2005. Microsoft Learning has some great free content that will help you get going.

Free e-Learning on SQL Server 2005
Microsoft Learning has got a free e-Learning course -- Programming Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 -- you can take for free. Containing detailed reference content and in-depth practical and hands-on activities, this course is a technically deep learning experience for architects, systems engineers, systems administrators, solution developers, and application developers. The course is designed for people who want to learn about either the planning/design phase of technology adoption, or the implementation issues specific to the build, deployment, and management phases. Find it at https://www.microsoftelearning.com/eLearning/offerDetail.aspx?offerPriceId=66787.

3 Free Chapters from Programming Indigo by David Pallmann
Microsoft Learning has also got three chapters for you from Programming "Indigo" The Code Name for the Unified Framework for Building Service-Oriented Applications on the Microsoft® Windows® Platform. Written by a key member of the Microsoft “Indigo” team, this book shows how to accomplish specific Web services tasks and prepare for the next wave of service-oriented development. Get the PDF of chapter 1 at [[wherever you put it]]. You'll find chapters 3 and 5 at http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/community/books/indigo/default.aspx. Learn more about this book at http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/7703.asp.

Merge Multiple .NET Assemblies Into One

Brad_McCabe — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 19:51:00 GMT

Here is a great "power toy" for .NET developers, ILMerge.

ILMerge will allow you to combine multiple .NET assemblies into one. This allows lots of different possibilities, the most common of which is if you have a project where some of the code was developed by a VB team and others by a C# team. Using ILMerge you can combine these two assemblies into one to distribute to your customers just like if you had coded them in one solution.

Another possible use, if you have built out your UI in one solution and your business logic in a separate solution you can combine these two assemblies into one. While there are certain values to leaving these as two assemblies in other situations the benefits of a single assembly is more desirable.

Want to Customize your menus in Visual Studio 2005? Here's how...

Brad_McCabe — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 18:51:00 GMT

The VB IDE Team has a great post about customizing the menu in VS 2005. Check it out on their blog here.

Additional Free Refactorings Available for Refactor

Brad_McCabe — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 19:57:00 GMT

If you have registered your free copy of Refactor you are eligible for two new refactorings from Developer Express to add to the existing options already available in the product. If you have not already tried Refactor you can download Refactor for free and register to get this additions.

The new refactorings for the Registration Bonus are:
"Create Setter Method" -- Generates an internal set method for a field. This refactoring makes it easy to quickly create an internal setter method for a field.
"Split Multi-variable Declaration" -- Splits multi-variable declarations into multiple lines, with a separate declaration for each variable on each line.

In addition there are new refactorings added to the Profesional version of Refactor that VB developers can upgrade to for the discounted price ($99 USD).

The new refactorings for Refactor!Pro are:
"Case to Conditional" -- Converts Select statements to a series of nested if-else conditionals.
"Conditional to Case" -- Converts nested if-else conditionals into a Select statement.
"Inline Recent Assignment" -- Replaces an identifier with its most-recent assignment.
"Inline Result" -- Replaces all assignments to a temporary variable which occur immediately before the return statement with a return statement which returns the right side of the old assignment statement. "Method to Property" -- Transforms a method to a property.
"Replace with Constant" -- Replaces an expression with a reference to a constant with the same value.

** New VB Specific refactorings for Refactor!Pro:
"Create With Statement" -- Creates a With statement for frequently-referenced objects in the selection.
"Inline With Statement" -- Inlines the object reference of a With statement into all dot-references.

Lots and Lots of Code Samples

Brad_McCabe — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 07:26:00 GMT

We have been busy publishing and posting code samples for Visual Basic 2005 the last week or so.

For starters (sorry, no pun intended) there are two new start kits.

The first is a Shareware Starter Kit. The Shareware Starter Kit is a sample application that implements the common features in shareware applications. The Shareware Starter Kit includes sample components that show integrated e-commerce using PayPal, secure product activation, product registration, error reporting, and more using Web services.

The Channel 9 guys are running a cool contest with this Starter Kit that lets you win a free trip to PDC.

The second is a Card Game Starter Kit. This Starter Kit is a complete Black Jack card game. The starter kit contains an extensible framework for building card games and a Black Jack game application that is built on top of this framework. The project comes ready to compile and run, but it's easy to customize with only a little extra programming. The section Expanding the Card Game contains a list of some customizations you might make. You are also free to use the source code as the basis for your own card game projects, and share your work with others or upload it to the Internet.

The other new thing is the first 50 samples in the 101 code samples for VB 2005. We thought it was important to get the first 50 out and in peoples hands to look at and play with while we work on finishing off and polishing the second half.

We have some more code samples, demos, and videos on VB 2005 coming out in the next few weeks. If you want to keep on top of all of the 2005 information either check out the reorganized VB 2005 page or you can now subscribe on that page to a new RSS feed with all of the latest VB 2005 information. You can either subscribe on teh VB 2005 page or add http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=50738 to your RSS Feeds.