Chris Bowen's Blog : Visual Studio

Visual Studio 2010 & .NET 4.0 Training Kit Available

cbowen — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 02:40:36 GMT

If you're interested in learning more about the what's coming in the VS 2010/.NET 4.0 wave, check out the "Visual Studio 2010 & .NET 4.0 Training Kit" (November Preview):

The Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 Training Kit includes presentations, hands-on labs, and demos. This content is designed to help you learn how to utilize the Visual Studio 2010 features and a variety of framework technologies including: C# 4.0, Visual Basic 10, F#, Parallel Computing Platform, WCF, WF, WPF, ASP.NET AJAX 4.0, ASP.NET MVC Dynamic Data.

The kit will be expanded and updated periodically as final release approaches, but here's what the kit currently contains:

Presentations:
- Overview of the .NET Framework 4.0
- Overview of the Visual Studio 2010
Hands-On Labs:
- Visual Studio 2010: Office Programmability
- Visual Studio 2010: Test Driven Development
- Parallel Extensions: Building Multicore Applications with .NET
- Introduction To Managed Extensibility Framework
- ASP.NET AJAX
- ASP.NET Dynamic Data
- Intro To Project "Velocity"
- Intro To F#

To try these labs, you can download a VPC with the CTP of .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 here. (You can also check out Brian Keller's post on a faster way to download large VPCs.)

BTW, there's a similar Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 Training Kit as well.

-Chris

P.S. This is exactly the kind of the stuff you'll hear about at the MSDN Developer Conference series from December through February!

Tips from My Technical Presentations

cbowen — Tue, 27 May 2008 21:18:55 GMT

My role involves spending a good deal of time with technical audiences. Recently, I've been getting reactions like this - "I enjoyed your presentation! I have an odd question - how did you zoom in like that?" or "How did you set those colors in Visual Studio?"

So, I'm posting some tips so I can direct people here for more information.

1) Use ZoomIt for Screen Zooming

It's never a good thing to feature content on your screen that the audience can't see. It's frustrating for them, and hinders conveying the very message you're trying to present.

Fortunately, there's a very easy answer. For areas where you can't already have proper font sizes and colors (see below), use ZoomIt, a free tool from TechNet!

Read my post on ZoomIt for details.

ZoomIt is just great. Obviously, you can zoom, but you can also draw lines, boxes, ellipses and text anywhere on the screen. It also has a break timer you can use to quickly count down that break between your sessions.

2) Change the Default "Highlight" Color in Visual Studio

The default blue highlight for selected text in Visual Studio looks fine on a computer, but when projecting, selecting text can actually make it harder to read - it's likely that nobody past the first few rows can read what you've just selected.

To fix this, go to Tools->Options->Environment->Fonts And Colors, then in the "display items" list, choose "Selected Text" and change the background color to bright yellow or green (think highlighter) and the text to black.

3) Use a Code Color/Font Scheme That's Easy to View

This is clearly subjective, but I've found that changing the fonts and colors from the default results in code that's easier on the eyes. Many people have told me they prefer this, nobody has said they had trouble with it.

I've uploaded the settings file for my colors and fonts to SkyDrive (see the above code picture for a preview.) You can easily apply them to your own Visual Studio settings using "Tools->Import and Export Settings". I'd recommend you back up your current settings using the Export option before trying this out.

I use the Consolas font in Visual Studio, which you can download here.

Also, check out Scott Hanselman's great post on alternate Visual Studio themes.

4) Create Quick-Change Font Size Macros

In Visual Studio, it's easy to create your own keybindings to IDE features. I've added CTRL-SHIFT-[+/-] to mine which quickly increments or decrements the editor font size.

The screenshot at right shows the decrease font macro I've wired up. Go to Tools->Options->Environment->Keyboard, then type "Font" into the Show Commands Containing textbox to find the font-related commands.

Then you can just ask the audience if they can see, quickly bump the font a bit and you're good to go.

5) Have Emergency Backup Plans... and Pictures... and Video

Let's face it, sometimes demos don't work as planned. Pilot error, beta software, phases of the moon - you need a contingency plan. I'll typically run through my demos and take screenshots of the key points, adding them to the end of my presentation deck.

In some cases, you might even consider recording the whole demo, using a tool like Camtasia. Play the video (without sound) and narrate what's happening for the audience. Your audience will appreciate having content rather than watching you flail about, trying to diagnose a problem.

This also applies to websites that you may want to show, should you find yourself without web connectivity. Either save a local copy of the page (in IE, File->Save As->Web Archive, single file (*.mht)) or just take a screenshot.

Hope you find these tips useful. Do you have others?

-Chris

Summary of MIX '08 Highlights

cbowen — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 19:37:33 GMT

It's been a busy week (getting ready for the 2008 Launch event in Boston next week), but I have a moment to share details from my trip to MIX '08 last week.

It was my first MIX, and incredibly, my first visit to Las Vegas! Not a lot of free time to absorb the city, but it was great.

Didn't get to go (or went but somehow couldn't be everywhere at once)? All content was recorded and is freely available at:

http://sessions.visitmix.com/

First, the featured products and tools:

Silverlight 2 Beta 1 is now available, with a non-commercial Go-Live license
Deep Zoom Composer CTP (used to create applications like Hard Rock's Memorabilia site)
Expression Studio 2 Beta - Requires and supports .NET 3.5
Expression Blend 2.5 March 2008 Preview - supports Silverlight 1.0, 2, and WPF
Expression Professional Subscription
- For pro designers, it complements the existing MSDN developer subscription
Silverlight 1.0 for Mobile
Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008 with support for Silverlight 2 Beta 1
IIS 7 Media Pack - enhancements for optimizing media and data streaming
Internet Explorer 8 Beta is now available
- Cool new features include WebSlices and Activities
- IE 8 Virtual Machines are available to help with SxS testing
MVC Preview 2 is now available
Updated ASP.NET Extensions Preview

And the Demos:

This video of the keynote captures all of the demos
This post captures the play-by-play essence of the keynote
Companies:

Aston Martin
Cirque du Soleil
Hard Rock Memorabilia - An amazing demo of the Memorabilia site that uses Silverlight 2's native Deep Zoom feature
NBC Olympics
Weatherbug Mobile Weather using Silverlight (example for Boston)
DoubleClick
Nokia
AOL Silverlight-based Mail Client

And finally, to describe the pictures on the right:

The top one is a picture of a Surface machine to which a picture of our group was sent from a wireless camera and enlarged right on the table. (Left to right - Me, Brian Hitney, Glen Gordon, Joe Stagner, Zain Naboulsi, Rob Bagby.) Very cool.
My colleague in the southeast, Doug Turnure, gazes longingly at the Surface machine being demoed. Surface, you had us at hello.
Really, I have no idea who these guys playing Rock Band are, but they were having a great time. There was a pretty impressive setup - wonder if I can replicate it in my basement?
Finally, though I did eat here and had a nice meal, I'm only including this picture of the David Burke restaurant at the Venetian in honor of the incomparable Vermont-based Dave Burke. Who knew you had a restaurant, Dave?

Hoping I get to go next year!

-Chris

Icons and Images for Your Apps in VS 2008

cbowen — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 19:13:11 GMT

[File this under Cool Tips That Are News to Me]

Thanks to Julie Lerman for pointing out a nifty little feature of the Visual Studio 2008 distribution that includes a library of image and icon files that you can use when creating your own applications.

Get the details in her post.

-Chris

.NET Framework Source Now Available

cbowen — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 02:30:54 GMT

Scott Guthrie has just posted the excellent news that everything is now in place for people to access the source code for the .NET Framework!

You can now configure Visual Studio 2008 to step through your code and directly into the source for classes in the following libraries:

.NET Base Class Libraries (including System, System.CodeDom, System.Collections, System.ComponentModel, System.Diagnostics, System.Drawing, System.Globalization, System.IO, System.Net, System.Reflection, System.Runtime, System.Security, System.Text, System.Threading, etc).

ASP.NET (System.Web, System.Web.Extensions)

Windows Forms (System.Windows.Forms)

Windows Presentation Foundation (System.Windows)

ADO.NET and XML (System.Data and System.Xml)

The real how-to details are on Shawn Burke's blog, including the "get me running quickly" and "I want to know even more" versions of the story.

-Chris

Speaking on VS2008 with Western MA .NET - 1/8/08

cbowen — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 16:25:14 GMT

For those of you in the Springfield, MA area tonight (Jan 8th), I'll be visiting with the Western Mass .NET Users Group to speak on "What's New in Visual Studio 2008?".

Now that Visual Studio 2008 is released and available, it's important to understand the new available features and adoption strategies. This demo-heavy session will cover many topics, including new features for Windows application developers: Client Application Services, WPF integration, WinForm/WPF interop, and Office development. New features for web developers: new ASP.NET controls, integrated AJAX, CSS tools, nested master pages, JavaScript IntelliSense and debugging. Plus new features for everyone: unit testing, debugging to .NET Framework code, multi-targeting, and improvements for WCF & WF.

The meeting will be at 6:00 in a special location - the MassMutual Conference Center in Chicopee, MA. Details are on the group's site.

-Chris

World of Warcraft Meets Visual Studio 2008

cbowen — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 17:16:28 GMT

In an bit of good timing for some holiday season downtime, Dan Fernandez has announced the first release of AddOn Studio for World of Warcraft on CodePlex.

World of Wacraft supports user-generated utilities and interfaces, called AddOns. Now we can use Visual Studio to help create our own:

AddOn Studio for World of Warcraft is an open-source development tool aimed to bring the Visual Studio experience to building World of Warcraft addons. This is the first release of the project and we have lots more ideas around how we can better improve addon development in the future.

AddOn Studio is a good example of what can be done with the Visual Studio 2008 Shell to create customized editing environments based on Visual Studio. It offers the VS2008 design surface and has editor and IntelliSense support for both LUA and FrameXML, used by World of Warcraft add ons.

Check out Dan's post for more details and a link to an interesting demo video. I also recommend running through the helpful tutorial that's included with the install.

I haven't played World of Warcraft since about Tech*Ed 07, when my "friends" Patrick Hynds and Duane Laflotte evilly tempted me back in, but something like this (and seeing what new AddOns the community can produce) might pull me in yet again.

Well, if only for a month...

-Chris

Save the Dates - Northeast 2008 Launch Events Announced

cbowen — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 19:16:59 GMT

We've just announced the schedule for the 2008 Launch Events across the country, following the kickoff event in Los Angeles on February 27th!

These events are a great way to learn about what's new with three major products, Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008, and SQL Server 2008. You'll have a chance to attend sessions, speak with experts, and test drive the software.

Here are the in-person events for the northeast:

~~April 15~~ March 11: Manchester, NH
March 18: Boston, MA
April 17: Hartford, CT
~~March 20~~ May 13: Albany, NY
May 15: Rochester, NY

Registration ~~will be available soon~~ is now available for most events. Details are on the Heroes Happen Here site.

-Chris

[Update 1/11 - Noted registration is open and corrected changed dates (thanks John Ross!)]

Waltham InstallFest Registration Open

cbowen — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 20:53:45 GMT

The gates are open for you to register for the December 12th combined Boston .NET User Group holiday social and Visual Studio 2008 InstallFest in Waltham, MA!

Just head over to the Boston .NET User Group site for more information!

-Chris

Technorati tags: Events, User Groups, Massachusetts, Visual Studio

Visual Studio 2008 InstallFests in the Northeast!

cbowen — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 06:14:13 GMT

Visual Studio 2008 has now been released to manufacturing, and as a "thank you" to the community, we're collaborating with area user groups to host a series of Visual Studio InstallFests.

I'm happy to announce that we'll have four InstallFests in the Northeast over the coming two weeks!

12/4 - Rochester, NY
12/6 - Burlington, VT
12/10 - Hartford, CT
12/12 - Waltham, MA

Partnering with area user groups, we're offering attendees a chance to install the release version Visual Studio 2008, enjoy some food, conversation, and gaming! Since the packaged product hasn't been released yet, here's what will happen:

Bring your laptops (or heck, a desktop!) and your festive selves
Grab a DVD with the Visual Studio 2008 Pro Trial Edition bits
Install and be happy
Play some Halo 3 or Guitar Hero, munch on some food, chat with people
Go home and enjoy VS2008
...wait...
When the packaged product ships, you'll get a copy of Visual Studio 2008 Professional in the mail! (Which will *not* require a reinstall of the trial version.)

As an added incentive to get VS2008 installed that evening, we're giving away T-shirts and raffling off a new 8GB Zune among the people who get VS2008 on their machines!

"Free Sounds Good! So, Where? When? How Do I Sign Up?"

You may notice that the events are generally on our MSDN Roadshow days (except for Waltham, where the Roadshow will be the following day.) That's of course no coincidence, we'd like to take advantage of our passing through various areas in the northeast to run these special events.

Each event has its own timing, registration, and logistics, detailed below.

As you can guess, we have limited quantities of giveaways (and "free" always draws a crowd) so we can't guarantee everyone will walk away with something.

Rochester, NY
December 4th, 4:30 to 6:30 PM
RIT, Building 70, Room 1400, 20 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, NY
In partnership with Visual Developers of Upstate New York (VDUNY)
and the NJ/NY Microsoft Developers Group

Right after the Roadshow ends, we'll jump into the InstallFest, staying in the same room on the RIT campus we're using for the Roadshow. The event will run from about 4:30 to 6:30 (at which time we encourage you to head downtown and check out Digital Rochester's Festivus!)

Priority for giveaways will be given to everyone who attends (not just registers for) the Rochester Roadshow event. Remaining materials are available, while they last, to any walk-ins.

Burlington (Williston), VT
December 6th, 4:15 to 6:00 PM
Vermont Technical College, 201 Lawrence Place, Room 401, Williston, VT
In partnership with the Vermont .NET User Group

Like Rochester, we're running this InstallFest in the same room as the Roadshow event that day. Stay with us from 4:15 until 6:00 and enjoy some food, camaraderie, and gaming.

Priority for giveaways will be given to everyone who attends (not just registers for) the Burlington Roadshow event. Remaining materials are available, while they last, to any walk-ins.

Hartford (Farmington), CT
December 10th, 6:00 to 8:00 PM
Microsoft, 74 Batterson Park Road, Farmington, CT
In partnership with the Connecticut .NET User Group

Though there's a Roadshow event that day at UConn in Hartford, we're holding the InstallFest down the road at the Farmington Microsoft office.

You must register by sending a note to [CTDOTNET [at] gmail [dot] com]. Remaining materials will be available while they last to people who have not RSVPed.

Waltham, MA
December 12th, 5:30 - 8:00 PM
Microsoft, 201 Jones Road, 6th Floor, Waltham, MA
In partnership with the Boston .NET User Group

The InstallFest is being held as the traditional holiday pot luck social event for the Boston .NET User Group.

So, remember to bring food or drink to share with others!

Registration is required and ~~will be available soon~~ is available now via the Boston .NET User Group web site.

The event is now on waitlist registration. You can still register, but copies of VS2008 will be made available to waitlisted people at 7:00 if some of the first 150 people are no-shows.

"I Have a Question..."

No problem, ask away (in the comments or directly to me,) but first check out my Texas-based colleague Chris Koenig's great summary of the events for that area. Many of the same details apply to our events.

See you at the Roadshows and InstallFests!

-Chris

Technorati tags: Visual Studio, Events, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, User Groups

Visual Studio 2008 and Training Kit Released!

cbowen — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:04:26 GMT

Visual Studio 2008 & .NET 3.5

We've just announced the RTM (release to manufacturing) of Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5! MSDN subscribers can download the English versions now, plus there are trial editions and the Express editions available as well.

Where to get it? Visit the Visual Studio Developer Center.

It's going to be a big blogging day. Check out some detail posts:

Visual Studio 2008 Training Kit

We've also released a fantastic resource (that was formerly only available within Microsoft) for developers to learn about Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5. Download the Visual Studio 2008 Training Kit, which contains many presentations, hands-on labs, and demos covering a variety of topics (including LINQ, C# 3.0, VB 9, and much more.)

Videos from the presentations are also working their way onto Channel 9. David Aiken has a helpful post with more details.

Learn More at the Roadshow!

If you live the in the northeastern U.S., you can also learn about Visual Studio 2008, LINQ, and more by coming to one of our Roadshow events in December.

Enjoy!
-Chris

Technorati tags: Visual Studio, .NET

Major Visual Studio 2008 Announcements Today

cbowen — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:15:58 GMT

We've taken the wraps off some big announcements related to Visual Studio 2008. As Soma mentions on his blog, he made the announcements at TechEd Developer Europe today.

The highlights:

Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 are expected to ship before the end of November
With Visual Studio 2008, license restrictions are being changed to permit partners to target other platforms with Visual Studio.
Premier VSIP (Visual Studio Industry Partner) customers will have access to Visual Studio source code
More details on Popfly Explorer - an add-in for Visual Studio to make it easier to work with Popfly
Microsoft Sync Framework CTP
- Document - "Introduction to the Microsoft Sync Framework"
- Bits - Microsoft Sync Framework CTP1

And more. Read Soma's post for the full details.

Mary Jo Foley has some coverage as well and there a press release accompanying the announcements.

-Chris

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Technorati tags: Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio, Popfly, .NET 3.5

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 VPCs Reissued

cbowen — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 21:34:54 GMT

If you previously downloaded the Beta 2 VPC for Visual Studio 2008, the OS used for that instance has an expiration of November 1, 2007. (Note that this only affects the VPCs, not the setup packages, so if you installed VS2008 on your own OS partition, you're fine.)

Jeff Beehler has a detailed post on the timeout and various workarounds.

However, assuming you move any of your custom data off the VPC instance, it might be easiest to just download the reissued Beta 2 VPCs as described by Jeff in another post.

Visual Studio Team System 2008 Beta 2 Team Suite VPC
Visual Studio Team System 2008 Beta 2 Team Suite & Team Foundation Server VPC
Don't forget you also need the base image (as the above are differencing disks.)

As always, the install packages and VPC images are available from the Visual Studio 2008 Downloads page.

-Chris

Technorati tags: Visual Studio, Orcas, Visual Studio 2008

Want Multiple Monitor Support in Visual Studio 10? Speak Up!

cbowen — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 17:10:00 GMT

My friend and Team System coauthor Noah Coad has just posted a great article about the issues and opportunities around supporting multiple monitors with the version of Visual Studio after 2008.

Noah's on the VS team and is asking for your feedback, so this is a prime opportunity to help shape the functionality of Visual Studio:

How should the windows be controlled?
How should dragging and docking work?
What is the default solution/project behavior when multiple monitors are present?
Options for zooming/panning?
Helpful keyboard bindings?
Helpful mouse options (like right-click -> Send pane/window to monitor X?)
More?

I've been getting a lot of questions about multiple monitor support when speaking about VS2008 recently, so I know there's a bunch of you who have definite interest and opinions on this.

Head over there and let your voice be heard!

-Chris

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Technorati tags: Visual Studio

Code Camp 8 - My Session Materials

cbowen — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 13:31:07 GMT

Thanks to everyone who attended Code Camp 8 this weekend! I received feedback from many people that the quality of the sessions at this camp was one of the best.

I'll post a more detailed summary later, but I wanted to give a link to the materials from my two sessions:

Visual Studio 2005 Tips, Tricks, and Hidden Gems
A Sightseeing Tour of Visual Studio 2008

Like we've done with the September Roadshow materials, I've used the Windows Live SkyDrive service to host my Code Camp materials.

Just head to this link to pull down the content:

http://cid-ec051608865165d5.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Code%20Camp%208/

-Chris

Technorati tags: CodeCamps, Visual Studio