VS 2010 RC Released

Microsoft has shipped the RC for Visual Studio 2010 / .NET Framework 4! The RC will be made available to the public on Wednesday, February 10, 2010.

• Jason Zander on the release.
• The download page

New Articles on MSDN: ClickOnce, Office 2007 Business Applications

The following new articles have appeared on MSDN:

• Certificate Expiration in ClickOnce Deployment
• Building the Contoso Auto Sales Office Business Application Part 1
• Building the Contoso Auto Sales Office Business Application Part 2

Community Convergence LXI

Welcome to the sixty-first community convergence. I’ve highlighted three new articles by HimaBindu Vejella on IDE enhancements, some articles by C# team member Eric Lippert, and one by Jason Zander, the General Manager for Visual Studio.

• Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 IDE Enhancements: Part One
• Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 IDE Enhancements: Part Two
• Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 IDE Enhancements: Part Three
• Eric Lippert: Style follows semantics
• Eric Lippert: Calling constructors in arbitrary places
• Jason Zander: Favorite VS2010 Features: Dependency Graphs and DGML

Community Convergence LX

Welcome to the sixtieth community convergence. I’m going to continue to keep this short, but I plan to update more frequently.

• Eric Lippert: Why are unused using directives not a warning?
• Sam Ng: The Pain of deploying Primary Interop Assemblies
• Scott Hanselman: DynamicQueryable makes custom LINQ expressions easier
• Scott Hanselman: How many PCs have the .NET Framework installed?
• Scott Guthrie: About Technical Debates
• Scott Guthrie: ASP.NET MVC 2: Model Validation

Help Me Get Started Using Visual Studio

If you are new to Visual Studio, you might be interested in these links:

• Visual Studio
• Quick Tour of the Integrated Development Environment
• How to Arrange and Dock Windows
• How to Navigate Within the Integrated Development Environment
• Managing Solutions, Projects, and Files
• Editing Code and Resource Files
• Creating Data Applications Using Visual Studio
• Building Debugging Testing

Community Convergence LIX

Welcome to the fifty-ninth Community Convergence – now shorter than ever! Below you will see the top links for this week.

• Alexandra Rusina
•  Getting Information About Objects, Types, and Members with Expression Trees
• Eric Lippert
• What’s the difference between a destructor and a finalizer?
• Continuing to an outer loop
• Kirill Osenkov
• Unable to cast COM object … to IVsGlobalUndoCapableUndoManager

Article Published on Creating a LINQ Provider

Pedram Rezaei has written a detailed and code centric article on how to create a LINQ provider similar to the LINQ to SQL provider. This article has large amount of specific technical information in it of interest to developers who want to tackle this complicated but very rewarding task.

• Building a LINQ Provider
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vcsharp/ee672195.aspx

SoCal Code Camp at California State, Fullerton

Just a reminder that there will be a code camp coming up in Southern California on January 30th and 31st. Follow this link for details:

• http://www.socalcodecamp.com/

SoCal Rock and Roll Code Camp: Yeah… It’s like that!

Error Loading Projects: ResetSkipPkgs

If you are having trouble loading projects and perhaps get an error message like this:  “Project ‘X’ could not be opened because the Microsoft Visual C# 2008 compiler could not be created.”

Try passing in these parameters when starting the IDE: devenv /resetskippkgs. This can fix a problem that occurs because you were prompted to stop loading a package and either intentionally or unintentionally clicked the OK button.

• More information from MSDN

Feedback Wanted: Links to C# Tech Info

A couple of us are working on finding a way to surface key links to information in the MSDN library. Perhaps later we will also link to information found throughout the community websites. If we can find the right approach, we might canonize these categorize and links on the Learn page of the C# Dev Center.

Below you will see a work in progress outlining one possible way to start to surface this information, along with a proposed set of initial links to information about that the various proposed categorize. Hopefully you will find this information interesting in and of itself. However, I would before I work too hard on it, I would like to get feedback from you on the structure of this data and the tentative links included here. If you have any comments on what you see here, please take a moment to reply to this post with your thoughts.

I think the categories laid out here are fairly self explanatory. I would only point out that the work shown below merges two different approaches to categorizing the information on MSDN:

• The first five big bullets categorize data by scenario. For instance, the work with scenarios such as: I want to “Work with data,” “Get Started,”  “Learn about C#,” “Learn the Tools”, “Learn about Web Development.”
• The final category drops the scenario approach and simply lists the technologies that Microsoft spends so much time publicizing.

It is my thought that some developers will think in scenarios, and some in technologies, and some will think in one way or the other depending on the circumstances. The categorization shown below is to designed to accommodate developers from both schools of thought. But I don’t mean to prejudice you by talking about what I’ve tried to do here. Just tell me what you think, if you have any impulse at all to provide feedback. At this stage, I’m not wedded to any of this, I’m just interested in hearing what you think. Thanks for whatever thoughts you might have on this subject.

Index

• Working with Data
  • ADO.NET
  • Entity Framework
  • Getting Started with Data
  • LINQ to SQL
  • SQL CE
  • Transact SQL
  • XML
• Getting Started
  • New to Development
  • New to C#
• The C# Language
  • Basics and Specification
  • Samples and Walkthroughs
• Tools
  • Command Line Compiler
  • Debugger
  • Visual Studio Editor
  • Visual Studio Project and Tool Windows
• Web Development
  • ASP.NET
  • HTML
  • Internet Information Server
  • Silverlight
• Microsoft Technologies
  • ClickOnce
  • LINQ
  • Office
  • SharePoint
  • Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
  • Windows Forms
  • Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
  • Windows Workflow

The Links

Working with Data

Webcast: Lighting Up the New Visual Studio 2010 Editor with Rich Extensions (Level 200)

Microsoft Events on MSDN will be hosting a webcast on Wednesday, December 09, 2009 10:00 AM Pacific Time. The event is designed to familiarize you with the new editor extensions that the WPF redesign have helped make possible. You can find more webcasts, videos, virtual labs and podcasts by following this link.

• Podcasts
  • RSS for Microsoft Podcasts about Visual Studio 2008: Develop at Light Speed on the Latest Platforms (MP3)
  • RSS for Microsoft Podcasts about Visual Studio 2008: Develop at Light Speed on the Latest Platforms (WMA)
• Visual Studio 2008 Videos
  • RSS Feed for videos and webcasts
• Webcasts
  • RSS Feed for videos and webcasts
• Virtual Labs

Official Publication of Creating Windows Azure Applications with Visual Studio Videos

Though they were previewed earlier this month, we have now officially released the first of Windows Azure series of How Do I videos. Below you find a list of the videos that have been created, along with links to their location in the How Do I Video library.

The Developing Windows Azure Applications with Visual Studio Video Series

In this series of videos Jim Nakashima shows how to develop Windows Azure applications with the tools provided in Visual Studio.

All these videos were created by Charlie Calvert

#1 | Windows Azure: Getting the Tools, Creating a Project, Creating Roles and Configuration
(14 minutes, 26 seconds)

#2 | Running and Debugging a Windows Azure Application Locally with Visual Studio
(6 minutes, 11 seconds)

#3 | Deploying Windows Azure Applications from Visual Studio
(6 minutes, 56 seconds)

Videos of C# Authors at PDC

Here are links to a few short video interviews by prebynski with C# MVPs and luminaries speaking while they attended PDC 2009 last week in Los Angeles. This is a chance to hear the interests and opinions of folks who are immersed in the culture and technology surrounding C#. All three of these interviewees are with authors who are currently working on new books about C#. Hear their take on new technologies such as Azure and Dynamic in C#, as well as their thoughts on the latest developments in existing technologies such as LINQ, WPF and Silverlight.

• Bill Wagner on C#
• Mark Michaelis on C#
• Paul Kimmel on C# and LINQ

Community Links LVIII

 

Data

 

Microsoft SQL Server Library

SQL Server Books Online

SQL Server Online Resources CTP, Troubleshooting Microsoft MSDN

SQL Server Online Resources CTP, Troubleshooting Microsoft TechNet

What's New (SQL Server 2008)

 

GettingStarted

Creating Your First C# Application

Development for Beginners Tools, Lessons, Resources on MSDN

Getting Started with Visual C#

Introduction to the C# Programming Language

Windows Development for Beginners

 

Language

 

C# Keywords

C# Language Features (C#)

C# Operators

C# Tutorials (C#)

How Do I in C#

The C# Language Specification

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 Walkthroughs

 

Technologies

 

ClickOnce

 

ClickOnce Deployment for Windows Forms Applications

ClickOnce Deployment Overview

ClickOnce Deployment Walkthroughs

 

LINQ

 

Anders Hejlsberg on Language Integrated Query

Enumerable Members (System.Linq)

IQueryProvider Members (System.Linq)

Language-Integrated Query (LINQ)

LINQ Home Page

Queryable Members (System.Linq)

Standard Query Operators Overview

System.Linq Namespace ()

System.Linq.Expressions Namespace ()

 

Office

 

Excel Developer Center

How-to Center

Interactive Developer Map

Microsoft Office Development

Office Business Applications

Understanding Office Development

Welcome to the Microsoft Office Word 2007 Developer Reference [Word 2007 Developer Reference]

 

SharePoint

 

Learn Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, developer, SDK, tutorials, videos, articles, books

Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies

SharePoint Developer Center 2010, 3.0, 2.0, downloads, tools, SDK

SharePoint Products and Technologies (2010)

Welcome to the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDK

 

WindowsCommunicationFoundation

 

Basic WCF Programming

Getting Started Tutorial

Guide to the Documentation

Windows Communication Foundation

 

WindowsForms

 

ClickOnce Deployment for Windows Forms Applications

Enhancing Windows Forms Applications

Getting Started with Windows Forms

What's New in Windows Forms for the .NET Framework 3.5

Windows Forms Reference

 

WindowsPresentationFoundation

 

Application Development

Getting Started (WPF)

Graphics and Multimedia

Windows Presentation Foundation

WPF Fundamentals

 

WindowsWorkFlow

 

Services Overview

System.Workflow.Runtime.Hosting Namespace ()

Windows Workflow Foundation Overview

Windows Workflow Foundation Tutorials

Windows Workflow Foundation

 

 

Tools

 

Debugging in Visual Studio

Debugging LINQ

Debugging Managed Code

Visual C# 2008 Express Edition

Visual Studio

 

Web

 

Asp.Net

 

ASP.NET Overview

The Official Microsoft ASP.NET Site

Visual Web Developer

 

HTML

 

Behaviors

HTML and DHTML Overviews and Tutorials

HTML and DHTML Reference

Quick Reference Guides

 

InternetInformationServices

 

Deploying Web Sites on IIS 7.0 The Official Microsoft IIS Site

Developing on IIS 7.0 The Official Microsoft IIS Site

Using Visual Studio 2008 with IIS 7.0 Development Tools Developing on IIS 7.0 The Official Microsoft IIS Site

 

Silverlight

 

Getting Started with Silverlight

Silverlight 3

Silverlight 4.0

Silverlight Overview

The Official Microsoft Silverlight Site

XAML

 

Web Development

 

Community Convergence LVII

Welcome to the fifty-seventh issue of Community Convergence. In this post I’ll focus on new articles from the C# team, as well as events taking place at PDC.

From the C# Team

Eric Lippert

• Closing over the loop variable considered harmful
• Three Umpires (The Compiler Calls ‘em as it Sees ‘em)
• Simple names are not so simple
• Simple names are not so simple, Part Two, plus, volcanoes and fried foods
• I have a Fit, but a lack of Focus.

Kirill Osenkov

• Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Known Issues – Part 2
• A million-dollar pen vs. a pencil
• Bezier Curves and Car Manufacturers
• Irony (.NET compiler construction framework)

Luca Bolognese

• Luca at PDC 2009 next week

Dustin Campbell

• Naming Anonymous Types with Generate from Usage

Sam Ng

• Com Interop in C# 4.0: Indexed Properties
• Channel 9: Dynamic in C#

Charlie Calvert

• Videos: Azure Services in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 with Jim Nakashima, Part I
• Video: Azure Services in Visual Studio Beta 2, Part II
• Video: Azure Services in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2, Part III
• Microsoft SDK for Facebook Released
• HDI Video: Generate from Usage in Visual Studio 2010 with Karen Liu
• Classic, Lightweight and ScriptFree MSDN Library Views
• New Article by Bill Wagner on Dynamic Method Bags in C# 4.0
• New Article on Detecting Memory Leaks . NET Applications
• CSharp “How Do I Videos (Podcasts)” for the Zune Software
• Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 does not Load: The “Application Cannot Start” and Raster Font Errors
• Running IronPython Scripts from a C# 4.0 Program
• Getting Started with IronPython
• New Video on Sharepoint and C# by Kathleen McGrath
• IronRuby and IronPython for .NET 4.0 Beta 2 Available

From others at Microsoft

Mitsu

• Read/Write selector in C# 3 then C# 4

Jason Zander

• Announced at TechEd Europe, Teamprise Client Suite Acquisition
• VS2010 Beta 2 Feedback Survey
• Tutorial: Getting Started with TFS in VS2010

Scott Guthrie

• Add Reference Dialog Improvements (VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 Series)
• WPF 4 (VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 Series)
• VS 2010 Code Intellisense Improvements (VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 Series)
• Searching and Navigating Code in VS 2010 (VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 Series)

Scott Hanselman

• Download Podcasts with Powershell
• Herding Cats: Organize your Desktop Icons with Stardock Fences for Windows
• Oredev 2009 - LIVE (now recorded) Closing Panel Video
• Hanselminutes on 9 - Debugging Crash Dumps with Tess Ferrandez and VS2010
• Offline installer for Windows Live Essentials - WLSetup-All.exe
• Using a Bluetooth Jawbone Headset for BT-Audio (Microphone or Speakers) on Windows 7
• Windows 7 with BitLocker and Still Booting To VHD

Brad Abrams

• Lightweight LINQ Parser
• Index for Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update

Dan Fernandez

• Visual Studio Documentary Part 1 & Part 2
• Download Visual Studio 2010 Express Editions

Downloads and Announcements

• New site dedicated to the Rich Internet Application (RIA) tools for Silverlight from Microsoft
• A Tentative Content Plan for MSDN Magazine in 2010