Visual Basic IDE Team Blog : Announcements

VB IDE Blog finds a new home - Please Update Your Subscriptions!

Lisa Feigenbaum — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 03:40:00 GMT

Hi all,

As of today, we are moving this blog to a new location. We've decided to merge our blogging efforts with the rest of the VB team, and thus are moving our posts to the VB Team blog. VS 2005 launches TODAY! Thus, the motivation behind merging is to create one site to be your best one-stop shop for Visual Basic content.

In terms of updating your subscription, you can change your feed from http://blogs.msdn.com/vbide to http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam to take advantage of the diverse content being posted on the vbteam blog. Otherwise, if you would like to continue hearing just about the VB IDE, you can also subscribe to the VB IDE filter on that page.

During the transition period, you may see some duplications while we migrate posts to the new location. However, we will be intermixing new content so you can look forward to seeing new stuff as well.

Thanks!
Lisa

Code Snippets on Channel9

Lisa Feigenbaum — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 02:02:00 GMT

Hi all,

Ken Levy and I created a Channel9 video, which demonstrates the Code Snippets feature in VS2005. Click here to check out the 38min show.

I've also blogged about this on the vbteam blog, so you can look there for more details.

I hope that you will take this opportunity to learn more about the ways you can use code snippets. If you have been reading this blog, it will also be a good opportunity for us to meet (via video). :)

Thanks!

Lisa

Talking about the Future: LINQ, Atlas, and VSTA at the PDC

Lisa Feigenbaum — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 12:36:00 GMT

Last week in Los Angeles (Sept13-16), Microsoft hosted PDC05… the11^th Professional Developers Conference. The PDC is a conference to educate, inform and excite the developer community about the future of the Microsoft platform. The conference was sold out, but there are still a number of sites where you can go to learn about what went on:

You can watch the opening keynotes on Tuesday, 9/13 here. You can also see the rest of the show and view PDC presentations, newsgroups, videos, on MSDN and Channel 9. Finally, you can follow PDC blogs at http://pdcbloggers.net;

Additional future-facing sites to watch include the following:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/future/: This page describes the future directions of VB and LINQ.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/pdc05/: This site is a complete online version of the VB PDC 05 Resource CD that was handed out at the conference. Besides combining all of the new PDC related material the CD also has a large section devoted to Visual Basic 2005 and VB 6.0 migration.

Now for a little more content.... Here's a description, from our Corporate VP S. Somasegar, of some of the Developer Division technologies that were announced – Language Integrated Query (LINQ), “codename Atlas” and Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA).

"LINQ is an extensible set of language extensions currently available for Visual C# and Visual Basic.NET. LINQ enables developers to query objects, databases and XML using a unified programming model because LINQ makes data transforms and queries first class NET citizens. Historically, programming and data have been two different islands. The development of data-enabled applications has presented developers with multiple challenges in the past decade. Developers have been asked to master multiple languages to build enterprise scale data-enabled applications. With Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005, specifically the integration of CLR into SQL, we took a first big step towards bridging these two worlds and empowered developers to easily build data-enabled applications. There are still some key challenges primarily related to the semantic differences between the programming world and the data world. I recently heard one of our RDs (Regional Directors) use a nice metaphor to describe the situation – “This is like using one language to order the drinks and another to order the main dinner”. LINQ is going to move us ahead significantly in terms of bringing programming and data together.

Atlas is a next generation Ajax framework for building rich web experiences in any browser, on any platform. If you have used web applications like MSN Virtual Earth, Google Maps, Flickr or Outlook Web Access, you have experienced dynamic web applications that use AJAX – a web development technique that uses a combination of technologies like XHTML, CSS and XMLHttpRequest. All of the pieces of AJAX -- DHTML, JScript, and XMLHTTP – have been available in Internet Explorer for some time. ASP.NET 2.0 makes it much easier to write AJAX-style applications for any browser using asynchronous callbacks. The ASP.NET team is working even further with Atlas to make it significantly easy for anyone to build even richer AJAX-style web applications to deliver rich, interactive, and personalized experiences. Developers starting this week can go to http://atlas.asp.net and download an Atlas SDK and get started building these apps today.

Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA) is a .NET-based application customization technology designed to be embedded into applications to enable developers to create custom experiences on top of those applications. It offers a full-featured interactive development environment (IDE), design-time, runtime and supports both VB.Net and C#. This means that partners, typically ISVs, can license the VSTA engine and integrate it into their applications so that their customers can customize their applications using .NET programming techniques. VSTA notably offers a significantly advanced environment for application customization and extensibility and is the result of over five years of effort and broad industry feedback."

Interested in Learning More About the Visual Studio Debugger?

Lisa Feigenbaum — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 01:29:00 GMT

Please join us in an online chat this coming Thursday, July 28th, at 1pm (PST). We'll be answering questions from the audience about the Visual Studio 2005 Debugger. You can bring your own questions or just listen in on the discussion. Click here for more details on the discussion, along with instructions for accessing the chat.

Interested in Learning More about the Visual Studio Debugger?

Lisa Feigenbaum — Mon, 16 May 2005 00:29:00 GMT

Please join us in an online chat this coming Thursday the 19th at 1pm (PST). We'll be answering questions from the audience about the Visual Studio 2005 Debugger. You can bring your own questions or just listen in on the discussion. Click here for more details on the discussion, along with instructions for accessing the chat.

Snippet Editor to Create Visual Basic Snippets

Sarika — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 17:02:00 GMT

Create your own Code Snippets with the Visual Basic Snippet Editor

Yesterday we posted the Visual Basic Snippet Editor, with source code, on http://workspaces.gotdotnet.com/vbsnippeteditor. The Visual Basic Snippet Editor is a Windows Forms application with UI for creating, editing and testing VB code snippets. You can specify snippet code and metadata (e.g., title, author, description, keyboard shortcut), replacement variables, and referenced assemblies. You can preview your snippet as it will appear when inserted into the code window, and you can even test whether it will compile. The site also hosts a reference doc for the snippet editor.

For more information and to download the product: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/downloads/2005/tools/snippeteditor/

Refactoring Tool in VB Editor

Sarika — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 16:58:00 GMT

Refactoring in Visual Basic 2005

In case you haven’t already heard, last Thursday (4/21) we announced the availability of Refactor! for Visual Basic 2005, a free version of Developer Express Inc.’s Refactor! product that supports Visual Basic 2005. This is a fully functional and licensed version of their product that integrates into the Visual Studio Standard, Visual Studio Professional and Visual Studio Team System products. With this tool VB developers will have a great refactoring solution that really complements the Visual Basic development style. Refactor! for Visual Basic 2005 supports more than 15 individual refactoring operations, including the most commonly requested operations like Reorder Parameters, Extract Method, Encapsulate Field and Create Overload.

Check out http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/downloads/2005/tools/refactor/ for more information (including video demos and a whitepaper) and to download the product.

Welcome to the Visual Basic IDE Blog!

Lisa Feigenbaum — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 19:56:00 GMT

Welcome to the Visual Basic IDE Blog.

This blog is hosted by the program managers, developers, and testers who work on the Visual Basic Integrated Development Environment (VB IDE). My name is Lisa Feigenbaum, and I am a Program Manager on the Team.

There are many new features, as well as enhancements to existing features, in Visual Basic 2005. So, I thought a good way to start this off would be to provide my list of the top 10 new features in the Visual Basic 2005 IDE. In future posts we plan to provide tips and tricks on getting the most out of the Visual Basic development environment, provide answers to frequently asked IDE questions, and most importantly provide a forum for you to voice your thoughts and comments.

1. Edit and Continue

You will again be able to make changes to your code while debugging, back up the code instruction pointer if you want, and re-execute lines of code with the modifications. This allows you to fix bugs or make changes to code while in break mode and have those modifications take effect without restarting the debugger.

2. IntelliSense Code Snippets

IntelliSense Code Snippets are reusable, task oriented blocks of code. Visual Basic 2005 includes code snippets covering tasks ranging from creating a custom exception, to sending an e-mail message, to drawing a circle. Code snippets can also be used for simple expansions of common programming structures. The code snippets are formatted to automatically include the references they require, and contain replacement fields to allow easy customization. The IntelliSense code snippet library consists of 500 prewritten pieces of code, and is extensible allowing you to create new code snippets that suit your business needs, edit the ones that are already exist, or download from third-party vendors and community sites. To insert a snippet, right-click in the code editor and select Insert Snippet from the menu, or use the keyboard shortcut (?+Tab).

3. Error Correction and Warnings

Let’s face it we’re all human and we make mistakes when writing code. The Visual Basic background compiler has always alerted us to these mistakes by placing a blue squiggle under the code associated with the error. In Visual Basic 2005, in addition to reporting the error, we’ll also offer suggestions for fixing common errors and help you apply the appropriate fix to your code. This is similar to the way Microsoft Word offers suggestions to spelling or grammar errors. The functionality is made available to you through a Smart Tag that appears when an error occurs in the code editor. Clicking on the smart tag allows you to open the error correction, read the error description, learn possible ways to fix it, and when appropriate preview the fix.

4. XML Comments

Documenting your code is a crucial part of an application, and Visual Basic 2005 adds support for creating XML-based comments in your code that can easily be extracted, parsed, and turned into documentation. These XML-based comments feed directly into the information displayed via IntelliSense so developers consuming your classes and methods will see the summary and descriptions you’ve provided as they write their code. XML comments can be inserted either by right-clicking on a declaration and selecting Insert Comment from the menu, or typing ‘’’ on the empty line above a declaration.

5. Rename

Rename provides an easy way to rename identifiers for code elements such as fields, variables, methods, namespaces, properties, and types. In addition to changing the declaration of the element, rename will update all calls and references to the code element with the updated name. This is extremely useful when doing iterative development. It can be invoked, either by right-clicking on a code element in the code editor, or by clicking on the smart tag which appears when you modify the declaration of a code element.

6. The new Exception Assistant

The Exception Assistant is a helper window which appears whenever a run-time exception occurs while debugging. It shows the type of exception, troubleshooting tips, help topic links, as well as potential corrective actions that can be applied directly from the Exception Assistant. In most cases when the Exception Assistant appears, you will have the opportunity to fix your code and continue program execution.

7. Project Designer

Visual Studio 2005 moves project properties, configuration and a number of other project specific designers into a central location to create a one-stop shop for project-wide settings. It includes a settings designer that supports the declaration of user and application settings, a resource designer that allows you to easily associate string and image resources with your project, and property pages with options for features like ClickOnce deployment, security and VB windows application framework.

8. Visual Basic Development Settings

When you start up Visual Studio 2005 for the first time after installing, and select the Visual Basic Development Settings, a number of customizations are applied to the IDE. By streamlining the set of menus, toolbars, and windows, this provides a focused and productive development environment for business application developers. Developers gain instant access to the IDE features they use most, without losing access to those used less frequently.

9. IntelliSense Filtering

You can now use IntelliSense filtering to adjust the level of detail supplied by IntelliSense in the code editor. When the IntelliSense window is displayed, you can filter out less commonly used members by clicking the Common tab or see everything that is available by clicking the All tab. By adjusting the level, you can easily filter out uncommon or esoteric members when they are not needed, or include them when they are. Regardless of the current tab, or filtering level, Intellisense will continue to provide full completion support by dynamically switching filter levels to provide the best match for what has been typed.

IntelliSense in Zone is a Visual Basic IntelliSense feature that displays certain items in the statement completion list in a different color if they do not have enough permission to run in the security zone specified. This design-time support allows you to more easily develop applications that run in partial trust.

10. New VB Form Templates

To help you be more productive in your development tasks, Visual Studio 2005 includes a number of new Form templates in the Add New Item dialog. These templates provide logical starting points to common programming tasks. Examples include: Dialog, Explorer Form, MDI Parent, About Box, Login Form, and Splash Screen. It’s also easy enough to create your own!

11. Just My Code Debugging

When you create a new project in Visual Basic, the project generally includes a lot of code that you didn't write. Just My Code debugging provides the option to always skip over any code that you didn't write, when you’re single-step debugging through your code. This also allows you to step through Windows Forms event handlers, much like you could in Visual Basic 6.0.