The Design-Time Developer : Visual Basic 2005 Today

Farewell to Microsoft

jacobcy — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 22:44:00 GMT

During my three-year tenure at Microsoft, I have met many wonderful people. For those of you I have worked with along the way, I wanted to share my bittersweet news. After three amazing years at Microsoft, I will be leaving to start a new chapter in my life. While I am not writing out the possibility of returning to Microsoft in the future, now is the optimal time in my life to transition to the next phase of my career path. Thank you for joining me on my wonderful three-year roller coaster ride of challenges and opportunities – I hope that our paths will cross again in the future.

I will be moving to Equis Corporation, a real estate advisory group based in Chicago. My new opportunity will be as a transaction advisory associate with Equis. My duties will include working with business clients to identify their real estate usage and needs, work closely with my clients to evaluate the various space options and negotiate the best lease or purchase arrangements to help my clients save money. It will be a great opportunity for me to develop my customer relations and sales skills, while simultaneously having a significant impact on my clients’ businesses.

My last day at Microsoft will be 10/31/2006. Feel free to contact me via this blog if you would like to stay in touch following my transition.

Happy Coding,

Jacob Cynamon

Developer Community Champion/Partner Relations Lead

Microsoft Across America

Resources for fourth webcast: Deploying Visual Basic 2005 Applications with ClickOnce

jacobcy — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 16:56:00 GMT

Friday, July 21, 2005, 2 PM Central

View here: Deploying Visual Basic 2005 Applications with ClickOnce

Resources for after Friday's webcast

Visit the ClickOnce Team Blog
Using ClickOnce
- Check out the ClickOnce FAQ at windowsforms.net
- ClickOnce articles in MSDN Library
Bootstrapping Custom Components
- Download the Bootstrapper Manifest Generator tool

Tune in for the "RAD for VB 2005 Developers" webcast

jacobcy — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 18:31:00 GMT

Thursday, July 20, 2006, 2 PM Central

Resources for after today's webcast

Visit the Visual Studio IDE Blog
Writing Correct Code
- See below!
Code Snippets
- Read How to: Create a Basic Code Snippet
- Download the Snippet Editor Tool
- Take part in the code snippet community
Using the My.* Namespace
- Read Development with My articles
BONUS: Download Refactor! for Visual Basic 2005

Do you have other resources to share with the volkswebcast community? Comment to this post with the resource that you find most useful when it comes to rapid application development.

If you are looking all the way down here, you were probably looking above at the "Writing Correct Code" segment. If you did not see it, look above and you will see that it tells you to "See below!" Now that you are back down here, if you viewed the RAD webcast, you probably call that I put out a challenge, in the form of a homework assignment. The goal is to share poorly-written code snippets. Submit, in the form of comments, code that is poorly written*. If you have a file or code project (less than 1 megabyte in size), email it to me and I will post it up here for everyone to enjoy. This will serve as an exercise in identifying what's bad about the code, as well as giving us a chance to exercise some of the "writing correct code" features of Visual Basic 2005.

* Be sure to remove personally-identifiable information from code and resist the urge to share proprietary code.

Post-event resources for Tools and Add-ins for Visual Basic Migration webcast

jacobcy — Wed, 17 May 2006 16:58:00 GMT

Attend Wednesday's webcast on Visual Basic Migration
Time: Wednesday, May 17 at 12PM Pacific
Title: Tools and Add-Ins for Visual Basic Migration
Registration link: Sign up today for live or on-demand viewing

Resources for after the webcast:

Check out the Visual Basic 6.0 Resource Center
Visit Upgrade Resources for VB 6.0 Developers
Review the PAG* Upgrade Guidance Book and Assessment Tool
Try out the VB6 Code Analyzer Tool

Happy upgrading! If you have attempted or succeeded with a VB 6.0 -> VB 2005 upgrade, add a comment letting us know about your good or bad upgrade experiences.

Post-event resources for Creating Best-of-Both-Worlds Hybrid Applications with Visual Basic Fusion

jacobcy — Wed, 10 May 2006 06:57:00 GMT

Attend Wednesday's webcast on VB/.NET Interop
Time: Wednesday, May 10 at 9AM Pacific
Title: Creating Best-of-Both-Worlds Hybrid Applications with Visual Basic Fusion
Registration link: Sign up today for live or on-demand viewing

Resources for after the webcast:

Check out the Visual Basic 6.0 Resource Center
Check out the Interop Wiki
Read the following articles
View these videos

Some additional resources from Paul Yuknewicz, VB Lead Program Manager:

Hi Jacob,

Thanks for hosting this talk. I hope people liked it.

Here are a few goodies for your blog:

- Great interop, aka “VB Fusion” articles:
o http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbrun/vbfusion/
- Snippet for “Set desktop wallpaper” I used in the movie collection starter kit (attached)
- Download Amazon-enabled movie collection starter kit:
o http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/downloads/starterkits/default.aspx
- Cool PInvoke article:
o http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/pinvoke.asp
- Resource for other PInvokes:
o www.pinvoke.net

Best,
Paul

Learn how and when to migrate your VB6 applications

jacobcy — Tue, 02 May 2006 23:24:00 GMT

Wednesday, May 3, 2005, 11 AM Central

Details: This webcast explores the what, why, and when of migrating from Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 to Visual Basic 2005. We will introduce and explain the migration decision matrix and present migration strategies from a high-level perspective. This session is a prerequisite for the two demonstration-based sessions to follow, covering Visual Basic Fusion (interoperability) and Visual Basic Migration.

View here: Best Practices for Upgrading Visual Basic 6.0 Assets to Visual Basic 2005

Resources for after Wednesday's webcast

Visit the VB 6.0 Resource Center
Review the PAG* Upgrade Guidance Book and Assessment Tool
Try out the VB6 Code Analyzer Tool

Got any other useful upgrade/migration resources to share? Comment below to share them with the community.

* PAG = Prescriptive Architecture Guidance (would also have accepted "Patterns and Practices")

Resources for fourth webcast: Deploying Visual Basic 2005 Applications with ClickOnce

jacobcy — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 18:51:00 GMT

Wednesday, April 26, 2005, 11 AM Central

View here: Deploying Visual Basic 2005 Applications with ClickOnce

Resources for after Wednesday's webcast

Visit the ClickOnce Team Blog
Using ClickOnce
- Check out the ClickOnce FAQ at windowsforms.net
- ClickOnce articles in MSDN Library
Bootstrapping Custom Components
- Download the Bootstrapper Manifest Generator tool

Do you have other resources to share with the volkswebcast community? Comment to this post with the resource that you find most useful when it comes to ClickOnce deployment.

Q&A from RAD for the VB 2005 Developer

jacobcy — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 20:28:00 GMT

Q: In what file are the code snippets you create stored?

A: Code snippets are actually stored individually as *.snippet files, making them easy to migrate between developers and machines.

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Q: what do the Meyers Briggs predictions on your desktop reveal about you?

A: You saw the file on my desktop, didn't you? I have found self-reporting to be the main drawback against the value of Meyers-Briggs assessments. As people develop, their "inlook" (internal outlook?) changes and they will report differently on assessments like Meyers-Briggs.

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Q: How can you include not just Content specific Snippets, but browse through all VS snippets?

A: To view all snippets, you can use the Code Snippet Manager (Ctrl+B, Ctrl+K) inside Visual Studio 2005. You could also create snippets without metadata that defines the suitable context; this may be appropriate if you have comments or TODO items to insert with some frequency.

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Q: You talked about an design time evaluation window, how do I get to it?

A: You can use the Immediate window for design-time evaluation. See this blog post for more information - http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam/archive/2005/12/05/500252.aspx.

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Q: Would you post a link for a 'compact' listing of the previous webcasts, sometimes the mass of option on , and also for your blog ;-)he main events page is daunting...

A: http://www.tinyurl.com/ecvrw will get you to my blog, specifically in the section on Visual Basic 2005. Ironically, however, if you are reading this, you are already here.

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Q: What does ecvrw stand for?

A: Darned if I know... TinyUrl.com generates small URLs from big ones, so it is likely either a hash formula or a random string of characters.

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Q: When Can I expect my MP3 player? :)

A: I admire your confidence.

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Q: You should mention the free Discovery Pack @ http://www.thedifferenceisobviousvb05.com/Campaign.aspx. It includes a bunch of free stuff. You need to register there.

A: Good call. The VB 2005 Discovery Pack is chock full of goodies. I talked that team into promoting my webcast series and sharing the love by providing kits to all customers who attend 3 or more webcasts AND register through this website: http://www.thedifferenceisobviousvb05.com/vb2005/Campaign.aspx

Third webcast: Rapid Application Development for the Visual Basic 2005 Developer

jacobcy — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 02:51:00 GMT

Wednesday, April 19, 2005, 11 AM Central

Resources for after today's webcast

Review the Q&A from this webcast
Visit the Visual Studio IDE Blog
Writing Correct Code
- See below!
Code Snippets
- Read How to: Create a Basic Code Snippet
- Download the Snippet Editor Tool
- Take part in the code snippet community
Using the My.* Namespace
- Read Development with My articles
BONUS: Download Refactor! for Visual Basic 2005

Do you have other resources to share with the volkswebcast community? Comment to this post with the resource that you find most useful when it comes to rapid application development.

* Be sure to remove personally-identifiable information from code and resist the urge to share proprietary code.

Second webcast: Data Access with Visual Basic 2005

jacobcy — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 07:31:00 GMT

Wednesday, April 12, 2005, 11 AM Central

Resources for after today's webcast

Visit the Data Access Team Blog
Read about the Data Access Application Block in Enterprise Library 2.0
Can't get enough data about data access? Bookmark the Data Access and Storage Developer Center
Download the Amazon-Enabled Movie Collection Starter Kit and the Personal Web Site Starter Kit you saw during today's webcast

Do you have other resources to share with the volkswebcast community? Comment to this post with the resource that you find most useful when it comes to data access.

Based on your feedback*, after today's webcast, I will post the Q&A log from the webcast.

* My experiment is so far a success. You have provided a request about how to improve the series and I am listening. Please keep up the good work on your end by providing more feedback as our series develops.

'Volkswebcasts' - May Segment - VB 2005 Upgrade

jacobcy — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 01:47:00 GMT

To continue the Visual Basic 2005 webcast series in May, we will be exploring tools and techniques for migrating your skills and applications to Visual Basic 2005... when it makes sense to do so.

5/3/2006 9:00 AM Pacific - Tools and Techniques for Upgrading Visual Basic 6.0 Applications
5/10/2006 9:00 AM Pacific - Creating Best-of-Both-Worlds Hybrid Applications with Visual Basic Fusion
5/17/2006 12:00 PM Pacific - Tools and Add-ins for Visual Basic Migration

REGISTER for any or all of the webcasts through this handy registration site, plus gain the opportunity to earn valuable goodies for participating.

VBA vs. VSTO vs. VSTA

jacobcy — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 08:06:00 GMT

During today's Language Enhancements webcast, I received a question about what's going on with Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) - we briefly touched upon VBA and some of the other Office automation/customization tools. To help you out, I did a little research to find the resources that you can use to fill your brain:

VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) is a scripting language supported in several Office applications.

VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office) is a Visual Studio enhancement to support .NET managed code development for Word and Excel documents and Outlook Add-Ins.

VSTA (Visual Studio Tools for Applications) is a framework for adding scripting support to your own custom applications.

Which of these do you use in your development work? How do you use these tools?

First webcast: New Language Features in Visual Basic 2005

jacobcy — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 07:20:00 GMT

Wednesday, April 5, 2005, 11 AM Central

Resources for after today's webcast

Bookmark the Visual Basic Developer Center
Visit the Visual Basic Team Blog
Download the Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 for Developers e-book
NEW - VB Language Enhancement article

'Volkswebcasts': Experimenting with webcast concept through blog

jacobcy — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 19:00:00 GMT

Announcing Visual Basic 2005 Today! This new webcast series will kick off with 4 webcasts in April on Visual Basic 2005 features and functionality to help all you VB developers learn something new and increase your productivity. See below for the details on the first 4 webcasts in the series.

I have done a number of webcasts in the past and found that the one thing lacking in the webcasts is a sense of dialogue. To promote the exchange of ideas and knowledge, I will be leveraging my blog extensively as a vehicle for us to share thoughts and feedback. Before each webcast, I will post the details of the webcast and some links for additional information. After the webcast, my intent is for you, the audience, to post your thoughts, feedback and advice in response to the posts. My commitment is to keep the site updated as we progress; all I ask of you is honest and open feedback.

The goal of this series is to evolve to your demands. Toward that end, I will intentionally be making the first webcast extremely dry :-) Your job is to observe, learn about VB 2005, and provide feedback on what you liked and didn't like. Bear in mind that this is simultaneously a research experiment and a work-in-progress. You have the power to turn this series into what you want - a webcast series by the people and for the people.

4/05/2006 9:00 AM Pacific - New Language Features in Visual Basic 2005
4/12/2006 9:00 AM Pacific - Data Access with Visual Basic 2005
4/19/2006 9:00 AM Pacific - RAD for the Visual Basic 2005 Developer
4/26/2006 9:00 AM Pacific - Deploying Visual Basic 2005 Applications Using ClickOnce
5/3/2006 9:00 AM Pacific - Tools and Techniques for Upgrading Visual Basic 6.0 Applications
5/10/2006 9:00 AM Pacific - Creating Best-of-Both-Worlds Hybrid Applications with Visual Basic Fusion
5/17/2006 12:00 PM Pacific - Tools and Add-ins for Visual Basic Migration

REGISTER for any or all of the webcasts through this handy registration site, plus gain the opportunity to earn valuable goodies for participating.