Visual Studio » A Developer's Life

11 Aug 2008

VS 2008 & .NET 3.5 SP1 Released

TFS, Visual Studio

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 have been released. You can read the details of what’s included as well as download the service pack here. You can also read this post and this post from Brian Harry that covers some of the features in detail.

07 Aug 2008

VS 2008 & .NET 3.5 SP1 Almost Here

Visual Studio

A while back I posted about Visual Studio 2008 & .NET 3.5 Service Pack 1 (Beta). This was on May 14th. Based on the download text for SQL Server 2008 RTM, Service Pack 1 is a required dependency and will be available after August, 11th. Also, the .NET Rocks PodCast #365 announces that SP1 is already available so the show must have been released a few days earlier than expected :-) The description on the web site for this PodCast states that SP1 will ship around August 11th as well. At any rate, it appears that SP1 will be available…

15 May 2008

VS 2008 & .NET 3.5 SP1 Beta

TFS, Visual Studio

The beta release of Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 is now available for download. There are a ton of changes in this update. Some of the high-level changes include: Performance improvements for WPF-based applications (with no code changes) Improved designers for building WPF applications (can't wait to see this!) Full support for SQL Server 2008 The introduction of the ADO.NET Entity Designer (very cool!) Improvements to Team Foundation Server Improvements for web development Improvements to the C# and VB.NET experience in the IDE For example, one of the interesting improvements on the client side…

01 Mar 2008

PowerCommands for VS 2008

Add-ins & Extensions, Utilities, Visual Studio

A short while ago I wrote a post about the MSDN Code Gallery. For all intents and purposes I liked what I saw with a few exceptions (nothing major). I even posted a simple Send Email Message snippet just to try it out. Today, I noticed a new post that I think will prove to be very useful to many Visual Studio 2008 users - PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2008. This is a set of extensions for the Visual Studio 2008 IDE that offer various types of functionality, including: Collapse Projects Copy/Paste Class Copy/Paste References (this will be hugely popular…

21 Dec 2007

TFS 2008 Power Tools Released

Team System, TFS, Visual Studio

The Team Foundation Server 2008 Power Tools has been released and is available for download here. There are several tools/features included in this release - some new, some old: Team Foundation Power Tool command-line tool (TFPT.EXE) - contains some new commands for configuring Team Explorer connection settings (tweakui) and for destroying Work Items and Work Items Type Definitions (destroyWI, destroyWITD). Process Template Editor - updated for use with Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server. It also has several improvements, including: the ability to launch standalone without a Visual Studio installation, performance improvements, improved discoverability and bug fixes. Custom…

04 Dec 2007

VS 2008 Add-Ins

Add-ins & Extensions, Visual Studio

As I (like many others) make the full-time transition from VS 2005 to VS 2008 I find that I'm having to update several add-ins and utilities that I've grown accustomed to. Here is a short list of what I've updated so far: Visual Studio 2008 GhostDoc 2.1.2 - I've become very accustomed to pressing Ctrl+Shift+D to fill in the XML comments for my code. I'm glad to see that VS 2008 is now supported. Project MRU Cleaner - This is a very handy utility for removing orphaned or otherwise unwanted solutions from the Recent Projects list in VS 2005/2008. ReSharper…

29 Sep 2007

TFS (2005) Power Tools Final Release

Team System, TFS, Visual Studio

The latest and final release of the Team Foundation Server 2005 Power Tools have been released. This release includes two new additions to the existing Power Tool set: TFS Work Item Templates - work item templates allow you to define templates for existing work item types with specific fields already filled in. The work item templates are accessible via a Visual Studio add-in allowing easy access to your templates. This can be a great time saver if you fill out lots of work items - especially if they have a lot of fields that tend to use the same default…

04 Sep 2007

Cool LINQ Utility

LINQ, Visual Studio

Like a lot of you out there, I've been spending a bit of time learning the new Language Integrated Query (LINQ) features available in the .NET Framework 3.5 (still in beta). LINQ provides some very powerful capabilities for querying not only databases but other data types as well (e.g. XML, .NET collections, arrays, etc.). Although the syntax is similar to SQL, it is not exactly the same which offers a bit of a learning curve. I came across a utility called LINQPad a few days ago that has been helping me get over the learning curve with LINQ. This utility…

17 Aug 2007

Missing Silverlight Assemblies in VS 2008 Beta 2

Silverlight, Visual Studio

If you happen to be one of the many that is giving Microsoft's Silverlight 1.1 Alpha version a trial run, you may have ran into the same issue I did. When I created new Silverlight projects in VS 2008 Beta 2, the Silverlight assembly references had a warning icon next to them stating that they could not be found. The fix is quite simple - Microsoft has released a refreshed version of the Microsoft Silverlight Tools Alpha for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2. I uninstalled the old version, installed the new version, and everything worked fine.

27 Jul 2007

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 – Released

Orcas, Team System, TFS, Visual Studio

As of a short while ago, Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 was released. This also includes the .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2. Silverlight 1.0 RC is expected to be released within the next couple of days. Also, these releases (Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2, as well as Silverlight 1.0 RC) come with a "go live" license that allows you to start development now and not have to worry about a supported upgrade path when the final versions ship later this year. Here's a list of the installation disc images that can be downloaded: Visual Studio…

Category: Visual Studio