Skinner's Blog

Comments on Visual Studio, Visualizations & Modeling, .NET, and beyond

Latest Videos and Info on VS11 Visualization Tooling

Wanted to make you folks aware of a few new videos that have been recently made showing the latest...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 03/11/2012

Debugger Canvas 1.1 Released

Since the initial release of the Debugger Canvas last summer, the team has been busy taking all the...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 01/31/2012

What do you think of Debugger Canvas?

The folks behind the Debugger Canvas project ( a few from my team, a few from MSR ) are very...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 07/22/2011

ALM vNext Announced at TechEd

We just finished announcing all the great new stuff that will be coming in the next version of...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 05/17/2011

MSDN Instant Answers

Wanted to point out a great new feature that the MSDN team has just made available when searching in...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 05/13/2011

New version of the Architecture Guidance

I’m a bit tardy in passing this information along, but the Rangers have recently ( April 18th )...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 05/01/2011

Tech Ed North America 2011

Registration for this year’s Tech Ed North America is open. The convention is happening May 16-19 in...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 04/08/2011

Debugging Series: Symbols Server and Your Symbols

Last post, I gave you a simple introduction to Symbol Servers. I showed you how you can use the...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 04/06/2011

Debugging Series: Symbol Server

Whether you are doing pre or post mortem debugging, whether you are using Visual Studio or WinDBG,...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 04/01/2011

New Docs for Windows Phone 7 Development

The Developer Guidance team has just released Building a Windows Phone 7 Application from Start to...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 03/31/2011

The Visual Studio Debugger: A new series on an old topic

The Visual Studio Debugger has long been regarded to be one of the industries best debugger. The VS...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 03/28/2011

Job Opportunities

Wanted to directly call out a number of positions that are currently open on my team. To refresh...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 03/24/2011

More Docs Updated

Our UE ( User Education ) team is constantly updating our documentation on MSDN. This last month is...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 03/18/2011

Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Released

Lots of news today, as we have release the first service pack to Visual Studio 2010. At the same...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 03/08/2011

IntelliTrace and Azure

Grant Holliday has recently published a blog post that goes into more of the details around using...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 02/21/2011

Code Metrics, Reporting, and XSLT Debugging

In my last post, I announced a new power tool that allows you to analyze your managed assemblies to...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 02/20/2011

Code metrics from the command line

Yesterday, we made available a power tool that allows you to analyze assemblies in order to...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 01/28/2011

Force VS to garbage collect

Here’s another little gem I’ve got for you. As you probably know, Visual Studio is a big product,...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 12/15/2010

ALM Summit 2010

On November 16-18 here on campus, Microsoft sponsored an event called the “ALM Summit”. The event...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 12/13/2010

XMI Export Sample

Steve Cook, a long time architect on my team, has made available a sample that shows how to access...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 11/29/2010

A Windows Explorer Gem

I just tripped into this little gem and just couldn’t let this go without telling somebody, ‘cause I...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 10/11/2010

Need your feedback on Visual Studio 2010

Do you use Visual Studio 2010 everyday? If so, I’d really appreciate it if you could take 5-10...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 10/07/2010

ALM Summit Nov 16-18

Brian Harry just blogged about a conference we’ll be hosting on the Redmond Microsoft campus this...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 09/28/2010

TIP support for any ADO.NET app

In my last post, I discussed the benefits of the Tier Interaction Profiler found in Visual Studio...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 09/06/2010

The Tier Interaction Profiler ( TIP )

There is a little known feature that is part of Visual Studio 2010 Premium edition that I wanted to...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 09/03/2010

MSDN Keeps getting better

The documentation on MSDN Library continues to rev, as our hard working User Education folks have...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 08/26/2010

Final Feature Builder Power Tool Released

The final version of the Feature Builder Power Tool designed to work seamlessly with Visual Studio...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 07/22/2010

Productivity Power Tools: A MUST Have

If you use Visual Studio 2010 at all, stop what you are doing and install the Productivity Power...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 07/20/2010

Manipulating DGML Styles

Chris Lovett has created another fantastic video that explains the ins and outs of manipulating the...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 07/20/2010

IntelliTrace and unfamiliar code

One of the many great things about the new IntelliTrace feature in Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 is...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 07/07/2010

Architecture Guidance now available

I’ve been saying since the first PDC “Lap Around Visual Studio” talk I did back in 2008 how “big” of...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 06/26/2010

Layer Diagram Extension using the Feature Pack

As you certainly know by now, we have released the Visualization and Modeling Feature Pack. One of...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 06/18/2010

Feature Pack vs. Power Tool

In my “Sneak Peek…” post I promised to discuss the differences between a Feature Pack and a Power...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 06/07/2010

Documentation Refresh

The MSDN Library of documentation has been updated. Along with new content discussing the new...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 06/07/2010

Visualization and Modeling Feature Pack is now Available!

I gave you a sneak peek about this new feature pack here, but I am now very happy to announce that...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 06/07/2010

Video discussion about Visualization and Modeling in VS2010 Ultimate

David Giard, the force behind Technology and Friends,  has just pushed up a conversation we had...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 05/25/2010

Great blog Posts on Architecture Tools in VS2010 Ultimate

Jennifer Marsman has created a series of posts that capture the essence of my talks that I did on...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 05/14/2010

Launch tour summary

Jennifer Marsman, Developer Evangelist extraordinaire, has just blogged about the recent launch tour...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 05/10/2010

Sequence Diagram RE, LINQ, and Lambdas

The Sequence Diagram Reverse Engineering feature available in Visual Studio 2010 allows you to...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 05/08/2010

Sequence Diagram RE and WCF

I got a number of great questions in last weeks launch tour. One of those questions was a general...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 05/07/2010

Free VS2010 Training

The amount of new features that we have enabled in VS2010 is simply staggering. Scott Guthrie just...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 04/13/2010

Upgrade tool and VSVMSDK Available now!

Not only is Visual Studio itself launching today, but a couple of supporting deliverables are also...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 04/12/2010

Launch Day for VS2010 and .NET Framework 4!!!

As you undoubtedly have heard by now, VS2010 and .NET Framework 4 have officially launched! WooHoo!...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 04/12/2010

Announcing the Preview release of “Feature Builder”

Today we released the Feature Builder Power Tool for Visual Studio 2010 Preview for RC on the Visual...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 03/30/2010

XMI Support in VS2010

A few folks have pinged me in regards to the fact that I didn’t include XMI Export as part of the...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 03/24/2010

Work Item Visualization CodePlex Project

Mr. Levinson, one of our MVPs that has really been taking advantage of the new tooling in VS2010 has...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 03/22/2010

Sneak peek at the first “Feature Pack” for VS2010 Visualization and Modeling Tools

I’ve been hinting about a number of new capabilities that my team has been working on that are...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 03/19/2010

Visualizing large code bases with VS2010

Chris Lovett has just posted a great video on how to manage larger code bases with the new...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 03/17/2010

Layer Diagram templates for P&P Architecture Guide

Just wanted to point you all to the availability of a great little VSIX that the Patterns &...

Author: CameronS - MSFT Date: 03/13/2010

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