24 Feb 2012

Comparing Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 11 Beta Editions

Visual Studio 2012
Yesterday, Microsoft announced that the Visual Studio 11 Beta would be available on February 29th.  I expect there to be a lot of information coming out over the next few weeks (and months) covering the various features in the updated tools. If you are curious about what’s included in each of the Visual Studio 11 beta editions, then take a look at the Visual Studio 11 Features Chart provided by Microsoft: If you would like to compare the above features with Visual Studio 2010, then check out the Visual Studio 2010 Comparison chart: The following list summarizes most of the…
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23 Feb 2012

Visual Studio/TFS 11 Beta Coming Next Week

TFS, Visual Studio 2012
It has been roughly five months since Microsoft released a Developer Preview version of Visual Studio 11 along with the Developer Preview of Windows 8.  Today, Microsoft has announced that they will be releasing the beta version of Visual Studio 11, as well as the .NET Framework 4.5, next week on February 29th (the same day the Windows 8 Consumer Preview – a.k.a. beta is to be released). Some of the quick highlights include: TFS Express.  With the release of TFS 11, there will be a new “TFS Express” SKU that will be free for 1 to 5 users.  TFS…
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19 Jan 2012

Visual Studio Achievements–Nice Idea, But…

Visual Studio
Today, on The Official Microsoft Blog, Karsten (of Channel 9) posted about achievements being brought to Visual Studio.  Visual Studio Achievements (beta) is a Visual Studio add-in enabling developers to unlock various badges as they do what they do everyday – write code in Visual Studio.  There are currently 32 achievements, across six categories, waiting to be unlocked.  The categories include:Customizing Visual StudioDon’t Try This At HomeGood HousekeepingJust For FunPower CoderUnleashing Visual StudioYou can read the full list of achievements here.As you unlock various achievements, you will earn points and your progress will be tracked the Channel 9 achievements leaderboard…
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09 Dec 2011

Team Foundation Service Update

Team Foundation Service, Visual Studio 2012
We’re just a few days shy of three months since Microsoft first announced the new Team Foundation Service (a.k.a. TFS Azure) at this year’s //build/ conference. Since that time, Microsoft has updated this service over a dozen times – mostly to address bugs. Yesterday, the service received a major update that directly impacts how the service looks and acts.A high-level look at some of the new features includes:Improved navigation (really glad to see this). Homepages with more/better information allowing you to see a project’s overall status at a glance. Simplified UI for project “teams of one” – i.e. if you’re…
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21 Oct 2011

Visual Studio 2010 GDR

Visual Studio
A new update has been released for Visual Studio 2010 (client only) called the “Visual Studio 2010 SP1 TFS Compatibility GDR”.  There are several fixes and improvements in this update, including (as taken from Brian Harry’s blog post): The update gets its name from the fact that it includes changes necessary to the Visual Studio 2010 client to allow it to work with a TFS 11 server – including the Team Foundation Service Preview (a.k.a. TFS on Windows Azure). The biggest “news” is the addition of support for multi-line test steps in Microsoft Test Manager.  It’s mentioned in the #1…
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14 Sep 2011

//build/ Observations from the Outside–Day 1

Conferences, Visual Studio, Windows 8
Like so many others, I was not able to attend the //build/ conference (formerly known as the Professional Developers Conference or PDC).  However, I did have the opportunity to watch the streaming keynote live and I’ve also spent a good portion of the day watching various twitter, Facebook, and blog posts from those who are attending.  With so much coming out of Microsoft in one day it’s hard to keep up with everything being announced and talked about so I thought I’d put a few notes together around today’s event. The word of the day is BOLD I didn’t actually…
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25 Aug 2011

Team Explorer Profile Manager–Take 1

Utilities, Visual Studio
If there is one thing I can generally count on doing at least once a day it’s firing up Visual Studio 2010.  Along with Visual Studio 2010 I am also a heavy user of Team Foundation Server 2010.  I use it at my “day job” as well as at home on “side” projects.  At work, I switch among multiple Team Project Collections and Team Projects relatively frequently.  At home, more so because I tend to work with several CodePlex projects as well as local TPCs and Team Projects on my development laptop. [UPDATE: A new release is available – see…
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17 Aug 2011

Indent Guides in Visual Studio 2010

Add-ins & Extensions, Visual Studio
A short while back, I blogged about some of my favorite Visual Studio extensions.  Recently, I discovered another (free) extension that I’ve really learned to love – the Indent Guides extension.  This extension does exactly what it says, it provides visible “indent guides” within the Visual Studio source code editor allowing you to easily track various levels of indentation throughout your source code. My favorite feature of the extension is the ability to modify the look of the indent guide lines at each level of indentation.  As you can see in the screenshot below, I’ve modified the guide lines for…
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09 Aug 2011

.NET Framework 4 Update (KB2468871)

Visual Studio
Microsoft has released a GDR (General Distribution Release) update (KB2468871) that rolls all previous hotfixes – or QFEs (as of a couple of months ago) – into a single update. This update replaces the following hotfixes: 2183292 "Failure sending mail" error message when you send an email message by using a .NET Framework 4-based application that uses the "System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient" class if the email attachment is larger than 3 MB 2413613 A shortcut menu may appear far away from the mouse pointer when you run a Windows Presentation Foundation application that is based on the .NET Framework 4 2298853 Visual Studio…
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03 Aug 2011

Version Control Changes Coming to TFS v.Next

TFS, Visual Studio
For many of using Team Foundation Server on a daily basis, living with the TFS workspace has been a love/hate (mostly hate?) relationship.  A simplistic definition, if you’re not familiar with TFS’ workspace, is that it is a mapping of a selection of files within TFS version control to their corresponding destination on your local file system along with various related status information.  This workspace mapping is stored on the server – not the client (i.e. server workspace). The down side is that it is relatively easy to get your local file system out of sync with what TFS thinks…
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