Jeff Beehler's Blog

Tell us about VS2010 Beta2

jeffbe — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:37:23 GMT

Last week we shipped Beta 2 for broad distribution. Many of you have already sent us comments and improvement suggestions (thanks!)

At this point we are down to our final set of bug fixing, perf tuning, etc. We’re very interested in your feedback so we can take action on it before we ship the final version. To help make it easy, you can take this simple survey.

One thing in particular we are hearing a lot of feedback on is performance. We are working hard on the next round of perf improvements. You can supply your feedback through the survey. When you give us your feedback, the more actionable you can make it the better. We need to know what operations you are doing (like editing, debugging, etc), what kind of hardware you have (CPU, RAM, disk), and your hosting scenario (main machine, running in VM, terminal server, etc).

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

Jeff

Visual Studio 2010 Launch Countdown Sidebar Widget

jeffbe — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:11:01 GMT

With Visual Studio 2010 Beta2 out the door we’re getting very excited about wrapping the project up and launching on March 22, 2010. As part of that, we’ve created a sidebar widget that you’ll see around town to help us countdown to the big day. If you’d like to include it on your blog as well, here’s the script to add:

div#widget { position: relative; width: 250px; height: 155px; }

body ul#cntdwn { width: 250px; height: 80px; background: transparent url(http://toysfortweets.com/visualstudiowidget/cntdwn-bg.png) no-repeat scroll left top; list-style-type: none; text-align: center; padding: 74px 0 0 0; margin: 0; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; }

body ul#cntdwn li { float: left; margin: 0 8px 0 0; background: transparent url(http://toysfortweets.com/visualstudiowidget/number-bg.png) no-repeat scroll left top; padding: 0 0 5px 7px; }

body ul#cntdwn li.first { margin-left: 20px; }

body ul#cntdwn li em { display: block; color: #111; font-size: 1.6em; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; background: transparent url(http://toysfortweets.com/visualstudiowidget/number-cap.png) no-repeat scroll right top; padding: 3px 7px 0 0; height: 35px; margin-bottom: -5px; }

div#widget a#link { display: block; width: 250px; height: 155px; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; }

</style>
<script language="javascript" src="http://toysfortweets.com/visualstudiowidget/countdown.js"> </script>

“Going live” with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2

jeffbe — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:12:55 GMT

We are pleased to declare Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4 a “go live” release (read more about it on Soma’s blog). This means that Beta 2 has met high standards of quality for pre-release software, and we are licensing it for developing and deploying production applications.

We hope that you will consider using Beta 2 for “go live” production purposes. As you use Beta 2, we want to hear from you at our Connect site if you find any bugs.

In order to decide whether or not using Beta 2 in a “go live” scenario is right for you, you should carefully understand the terms and limitations of the “go live” license. Start by reading the license terms for Beta 2, which includes the official “go live” licensing terms.

The following guidelines should also help you understand the ways in which we are committed to helping you have a great experience with Beta 2.

We are committed to providing a smooth upgrade path from Beta 2 to the final release (“RTM”) of Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4. For Team Foundation Server, this means moving data from Team Foundation Server 2008 to Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2 and then eventually to Team Foundation Server 2010 RTM. Most importantly this means source code, work items, tests, builds and the warehouse.
We give you permission to use Beta 2 to create applications using runtimes which are “go live.” For example, the .NET Framework 4 is “go live” for beta2 and you can create applications both for internal use and external use. See the license terms for more details, including pre-release notifications and other details for distribution.
Our Support team is staffed to help support Beta 2 if you encounter problems. If you plan to use Beta 2 for “go live” please send email to vsgolive@microsoft.com so that we can register you for support.
Another option for requesting assistance is to visit MSDN Forums. The MSDN Forums are frequented by Microsoft MVP’s and members of the product group, and are a great place to search for issues submitted by others which might match problems you encounter.
You should take adequate measures to back up and protect your data prior to upgrading to Beta 2. You should also have an ongoing data backup and protection plan in place during your use of Beta 2.

Thank you again for your ongoing commitment to Visual Studio and the .NET Framework. With your assistance and ongoing feedback we can ship the best release ever!

Updates to Visual Studio UI

jeffbe — Thu, 14 May 2009 19:47:42 GMT

Jason Zander, the Visual Studio general manager, just posted a follow up to his post regarding the new look for VS2010. Based on popular feedback, we’ve updated the look and feel of our outlining feature. It’ll be available in our upcoming VSTS 2010 Beta 1 release and we hope you take a look and try them out. If you do, please let us hear from you.

Thanks!

VS2008 AJAX Profiling Extensions

jeffbe — Wed, 13 May 2009 15:57:00 GMT

Our team, in conjunction with Microsoft Research, have been working on a power tool known as AjaxView which helps measure the performance of web applications that execute JavaScript inside the web browser. This power tool provides an IIS extension that automatically adds profiling code into a JavaScirpt-based web application as well as a Visual Studio add-in to view the profiling data in the Visual Studio Performance Explorer.

Check out the details on Soma’s blog: VS2008 AJAX Profiling Extensions.

Free VSTS training in Seattle May 21st

jeffbe — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:09:00 GMT

Our friends Jeff Levinson and Steve Borg from Northwest Cadence are offering a free day of VSTS training. This session-packed day will show you how to do more with less. Use software development process and Visual Studio Team System tools to cut costs, leverage resources, and get immediate results.

Details:

Redmond, WA Building 43 Shasta Room
Thursday, May 21, 2009 8:00 AM -5:00 PM

Sessions

Successful Adoption of VSTS
Branching Strategies
Regulatory Compliance using VSTS
Metrics for Real Process Improvement
Using Team System to Drive Agile Adoption

Resources to learn more about Visual Studio Team System 2010

jeffbe — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:29:40 GMT

While the various Visual Studio teams are working on our first beta release, I thought I’d point out some important resources to learn more about what we’re doing. First is the new weekly video podcast series known as 10-4. This has been going on for a few months now but I finally figured out where the name came from…I just couldn’t get past the CB phrase that was so popular when I was growing up. I now get that it’s a clever combination of VSTS 2010 and NetFx 4. Duh! I guess I’ve been triaging a few too many bugs recently. :-) Anyway, Brian Keller and crew have done a great job making this information very accessible and interesting along the way. Here’s a quick list of the podcasts posted to date:

10-4 Episode 14: Sentient DSLs

10-4 Episode 13: No More Late Surprises

10-4 Episode 12: Simplifying Your Code With C# 4.0

10-4 Episode 11: Bi-Directional Routing with ASP.NET WebForms 4.0

10-4 Episode 10: Making Web Deployment Easier

10-4 Episode 9: Visual Basic 10

10-4 Episode 8: Pure Client-Side Development with ASP.NET AJAX 4.0

10-4 Episode 7: No More Planning Black Box

10-4 Episode 6: Parallel Extensions

10-4 Episode 5: Code Focused in Visual Studio 2010

10-4 Episode 4: No More Parallel Development Pain

10-4 Episode 3: ASP.NET WebForms 4.0

10-4 Episode 2: Welcome to Visual Studio 2010

10-4 Episode 1: Working with the Visual Studio 2010 CTP VPC

The other recent activity in this space is Brian Harry’s new series on VSTS 2010 which he started this week: Team System 2010 Overview. If you haven’t already subscribed to his blog, I’d certainly recommend it. Brian’s always got interesting things to say.

Gartner SCCM Magic Quadrant Ranks Microsoft VSTS a Leader

jeffbe — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 18:56:10 GMT

A few weeks ago Gartner published their 2009 Magic Quadrant for Software Change and Configuration Management for Distributed Platforms (what a mouthful!) and in their evaluation has ranked Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server as a leader in the space. This is Microsoft’s first time ranking as a leader which is defined as having a “broad solution with significant support for ALM deployment.” From my perspective, it was merely a matter of time before we were recognized in this way but it’s still an exciting milestone for us.

Some of the strengths that are called out in this evaluation include:

The product has a flexible process model implemented in a single integrated metadata repository.

Basing change, versioning and configuration around the concept of work items, rather than physical code changes, reduces programmer overhead for change management.
Distributed support within a team system project is well-supported with Web proxies.
Team System has demonstrated scalability.

You can read the full reports here:

Congrats to the Team System team for receiving this important recognition.

The Gartner Magic Quadrant is copyrighted (SCCM MQ2009, March 26, 2009. MarketScope for Application Life Cycle Management, 12/17/08) by Gartner, Inc., and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Team Test 2008 Quick Reference Guide now available

jeffbe — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:54:21 GMT

The Rangers have shipped again! (Faithful readers know just how much I love saying that). This time, led by Geoff Gray, they have put together the VSTT 2008 Quick Reference Guide, a comprehensive technical document about Visual Studio Team Test functionality, specifically focusing on Web, Load and Unit testing. Geoff is a member of our Services Testing Lab, an arm of Microsoft Consulting Services and he’s help putting together this great reference based on his own personal experience using our products in customer settings. As such, it’s chockfull of very helpful advice and best practices informed by real world usage. If you’re at all interested in using our Testing tools, I’d highly recommend taking a look at this guide.

Check out the updated Visual Studio look

jeffbe — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:25:00 GMT

For Visual Studio 2010 we have revamped the development environment to provide a cleaner, easier to use, interface all built with WPF. Jason Zander, our general manager, announced new details at VSLive yesterday and provided a blog post outlining some of the highlights. Take a look…I think you’ll like what you see.

Welcome Willy, our newest Team System Ranger

jeffbe — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:50:11 GMT

I’m pleased to welcome Willy-Peter Schaub to the Team System team as our newest Ranger. Willy is a former Microsoft MVP from South Africa (his old blog can be found here: http://dotnet.org.za/willy/) and has recently joined us to help further the Ranger mission of accelerating the adoption of Team System. He’s started a new blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/willy-peter_schaub/) and has already written 16 posts in his brief stint here so far. At this rate he’ll quickly surpass me on quantity and may have already done so on value. As such, I’d highly recommend checking out his new feed. He’s already doing a good job of explaining what the Rangers do (nice hat!), explaining the point behind the software development lifecycle, and pointing folks to nuggets of Ranger goodness. All in under two weeks!

Welcome Willy!

Check out our updated website

jeffbe — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:35:05 GMT

The next update to our Team System website has been made with an eye towards helping make things easier to find. Sharon, our web site manager, has been working very hard to help address the feedback we’ve gotten in the past and is very eager to hear what you think about the recent improvements. Check out her blog article describing the recent changes (http://blogs.msdn.com/selkins/archive/2009/02/04/new-team-system-site-launches.aspx) as well as provide her feedback here (http://blogs.msdn.com/selkins/archive/2009/02/04/team-system-web-site-feedback.aspx).

We’re eager to hear from you…we still have a lot of work to do and you can help us prioritize that work by giving us feedback.

Thanks!

Listen to me on Radio TFS

jeffbe — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:08:55 GMT

The Radio TFS folks called me at home just before the holidays and spent the better part of an hour talking about what I do, some of the history of Team System and where we’re headed with our 2010 release. As I’ve mentioned previously, it’s a fun format for getting some of the behind-the-scenes information out to the community. If you haven’t already, I’d highly recommend perusing their website for other shows that might pique your interest.

Take a listen to our conversation here: Play Now- A Chat with Jeff Beehler, Team System Chief of Staff

Updated Visual Studio Team System 2008 Trial VPC images available

jeffbe — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 16:30:22 GMT

For those of you that want to try out Visual Studio Team System 2008 including Team Foundation Server, without having to go through the process of installing the product, we have recently released four VPC and HyperV images for your use. The “all-up” image includes Team Foundation Server, Team Build, Team Explorer, and Team Suite while the TFS “only” version has just Team Foundation Server, Team Build, and Team Explorer.

These images are set to expire on December 31, 2009 (over a year from now) and are a replacement for the original VPC images we released last year.

VPC:

VSTS “all-up” Virtual PC/Virtual Server image (6 GB download, expands to 15 GB)
TFS “only” Virtual PC/Virtual Server image (3 GB download, expands to 8 GB)

Hyper-V:

VSTS “all-up” Hyper-V image (6 GB download, expands to 15 GB)
TFS “only” Hyper-V image (3 GB download, expands to 8 GB)

For more information and to find links to the images go to http://www.pluralsight.com/community/blogs/brian/archive/2008/12/24/happy-holidays-and-look-what-santa-s-brought.aspx. Many thanks to Brian Randell for his outstanding work pulling these images together and getting them through the sometimes Byzantine release process here at MS.

Enjoy!

Visual Studio sales site gets a facelift

jeffbe — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 20:06:00 GMT

Check out the updated sales site for Visual Studio at http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio. On the new site you can find numerous case studies as well as some of our current offers for Visual Studio as well as Team System. Finally, there’s in-depth information about the Team System line of products. All in all, a very nice looking and (much more importantly) informative site.