08 Jul 2014

Visual Studio “14”–CTP 2 Available

Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2015
Today, Microsoft released the 2nd CTP for Visual Studio “14”. According to Brian Harry, there will be “tons” of CTPs between now and the final release (expected sometime next year). Without going into a lot of detail here’s a short list of what’s new in this CTP (from the Visual Studio Blog): Save and Apply Custom IDE Layouts. You can now save and apply custom layouts for tool windows in the IDE. The Save Window Layout and Apply Window Layout commands are under the Window Menu and you can also rename, reorder, and delete layouts from Manage Window Layouts. Light…
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02 Jul 2014

Visual Studio/TFS 2013 Update 3–Release Candidate

Visual Studio 2013
Microsoft released today Visual Studio 2013 (and Team Foundation Server) Update 3 Release Candidate (RC). There is a great video on Microsoft’s Channel 9 site covering many of the features and enhancements in Visual Studio 2013 Update 3 RC. If you don’t have the time (or desire) to watch the video right now (it’s about 50 minutes in length) then keep reading… Here is a summary showing some of what’s new in Visual Studio 2013 Update 3 (RC): CodeLens Probably the biggest change with CodeLens is that it now supports Git-based repositories. Since it works against a local Git repository,…
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05 Jun 2014

Running Visual Studio 2014 CTP on Azure

Azure, Visual Studio 2015
Yesterday, I posted about Microsoft’s recent release of Visual Studio 2014 CTP. Whereas most developers are eager to download, install, and try out new software releases, there was one caveat mentioned in this post that is worth paying attention to: NOTE: It is recommended that you install the CTP on a machine that has no other version of Visual Studio installed. In other words, don’t install this on your primary/production machine! Since we can’t (shouldn’t) install the CTP release on our primary machine, a common approach would be to setup a virtual machine (VM) with Visual Studio 2014 CTP installed…
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04 Jun 2014

Visual Studio “14”– CTP Released

Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2015
Right on the heels of the Visual Studio 2013/TFS 2013 Update 3 CTP 1 announcement, Microsoft releases the first CTP for Visual Studio “14” (final name TBD). Although the final version of Visual Studio “14” isn’t likely to be released until next year, you can install the CTP now to get an early look at some of the changes going into the next version of Visual Studio. NOTE: It is recommended that you install the CTP on a machine that has no other version of Visual Studio installed. Although there a many features available in this CTP, some of the…
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18 May 2014

Extending TFS and Visual Studio Online eBook

eBooks, TFS, TFS API, Visual Studio Online
Last week, at TechEd North America, Microsoft announced the availability of a new API being provided by Visual Studio Online. This API is based on REST, OAuth, JSON, and Service Hooks. While this new API is still in preview mode there is still a lot of functionality that can be taken advantage of by your custom applications. While a great deal of documentation is being provided by Microsoft, I and Mike Douglas (a fellow Visual Studio ALM MVP) have started writing a book on this very topic titled “Extending Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio Online”. The primary focus of…
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13 Apr 2014

Build 2014–Quick Links

Conferences, General News, Visual Studio, Windows Phone
The Build 2014 conference ended just over a week ago and many of us are still sifting through the various announcements and downloads. This post provides a list of some of the various links to sessions and downloads that you might find handy. Sessions You can find the links to all the session videos and slide decks here. Visual Studio / .NET .NET Foundation – There were several open source announcements at this year’s Build event. The .NET Foundation will be the steward of a growing collection of open source technologies for.NET, Microsoft’s comprehensive development framework. Here is a snapshot…
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13 Apr 2014

Migrate from Visual Studio Online to On-Premises TFS

TFS, Visual Studio Online
If you have logged into your Visual Studio Online account recently you might have seen the notice in the image on the left. Essentially, what this is telling you is that if you would like to move your Visual Studio Online team projects to an on-premises version of Team Foundation Server, then you have until May 20th, 2014 to get it done. As might be expected, there are a few caveats: The on-premises version of TFS must be Team Foundation Server 2013 Update 2 This is a one-way move (from Visual Studio Online to an on-premises TFS). You cannot move…
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23 Jan 2014

Using Git and Visual Studio Online (Part 1 of 4)

User Group, Visual Studio 2013, Visual Studio Online
At our latest Omaha ALM User Group meeting, a couple of nights ago, Paul Oliver gave a talk on using Git with Visual Studio Online (formerly known as Team Foundation Service). Even though we didn’t record his session Paul has decided to do a set of screencasts of his talk. The first of four parts is now available on YouTube which you can watch below. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FgR9cwXhc8#t=23] We will post the links to the remaining videos as Paul gets them produced.
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21 Jan 2014

Visual Studio 2013 Update 1 Released

Visual Studio 2013
The final release of Update 1 for Visual Studio 2013 is now available. This update consists mainly of a collection of bug fixes and there is no update for Team Foundation Server 2013 with this release (there will be an update to TFS with the release of Visual Studio 2013 Update 2). You can see the list of fixed issues in KB2911573. Here are the links for the various updates: Visual Studio 2013 Update 1 Release Management for Visual Studio 2013 Update 1 Remote Tools for Visual Studio 2013 Update 1
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17 Jan 2014

Cloud Load Testing Service Webinar

Testing, Visual Studio 2013
On January 23rd, Microsoft’s Visual Studio Team is hosting a live Cloud Load Testing webinar which will be led by Charles Sterling and Manas Maheshwari.  With the introduction of Visual Studio Online launched in November 2013, software engineering teams now have a set of services that are available to them including the new Cloud Load Testing Service to help you easily discover performance issues of your application when it is being used at scale.  The Cloud Load Testing Service helps you execute load tests using Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 by taking care of the infrastructure, management, and administering of the…
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