09 Sep 2016

Editing Markdown in Visual Studio 2015

Add-ins & Extensions, Visual Studio 2015
It seems that every day I find myself editing markdown files more and more. I like the simplicity of markdown when it comes to creating documentation. While I realize that markdown isn’t nearly as flexible as full-on HTML I like that it forces me to keep my documents simple and clean.I’ve tried a LOT of markdown editors. I’ve tried on-line editors as well as editors I’ve installed on Windows. For me, personally, I prefer to have the editor installed on my machine in case I want to edit documents offline.Lots of Choices!For the past couple of years I’ve been using…
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28 Dec 2015

App Studio–Where’s it at Now?

Development, Visual Studio 2015, Windows 10
Nearly a year and a half ago I wrote about Windows Phone App Studio. In that article, I walk through the basic steps of creating a simple Windows Phone app that uses my blog site RSS feed to list and display articles. Nothing too fancy or even complex but it was enough to show that you could create an app that does “something” relatively easy and have it up and running on your devices very quickly.Fast forward 16 months and Microsoft’s App Studio is now simply, App Studio and is still designated as “Beta”. It is no longer Windows Phone…
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25 Jul 2015

Window Layouts in Visual Studio 2015

Visual Studio 2015
One of the many nice new features in Visual Studio 2015 is custom Window Layouts. For example, on a smaller screen, you might want a simple window layout something like this: There is a minimal number of windows in this layout and the ones that are there are fairly narrow. To save this layout as a custom window layout, such as “Small Screen”: Click on the Window menu and then select Save Window Layout. Enter the layout name and click OK. Now let’s create another window layout for larger monitors, such as this one: Notice this layout has more windows…
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17 Jul 2015

Visual Studio 2015 RTM-Join the Fun!

Events, Visual Studio 2015
As announced last month Visual Studio 2015 will be released (and available for download publically and via MSDN subscriptions) on Monday, July 20th – mere days away! If you would like to learn more about the features being included in Monday’s release then you will want to join Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2015 Final Release Event! You do not need to register for the event, just show up here on July 20th at 3:30pm UTC (10:30am CDT) to watch the online event.   Agenda 10:30 – 12:15 - Keynote: Visual Studio 2015 – Any app, Any developer 12:15 – 12:35 -…
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18 May 2015

VSO Status Inspector Extension for Visual Studio

Utilities, Visual Studio 2013, Visual Studio 2015
If you are a long-time user of Microsoft’s Visual Studio Online (VSO) then there is a decent chance that you’ve had to endure one or more “hiccups” over the past year or so. Today, if VSO seems to be running a little slow – or not at all – you probably go out to the VSO Support page to check the current status of VSO. There, you will see something like this at the top of the page: Clicking on the Visual Studio Service Blog link will take you to a page with more details (if there are issues being…
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06 Apr 2015

VS 2013 Premium vs. VS 2015 Professional

Visual Studio 2013, Visual Studio 2015
As announced recently, Microsoft is merging the Visual Studio Premium and Visual Studio Ultimate editions into a single, new edition – Visual Studio 2015 Enterprise. This is a free upgrade for active Visual Studio 2013 Premium w/MSDN subscribers – until your subscription renews. At the point of renewal, there will be a slight increase in price (actual price will vary based on whether or not you are buying a single subscription or if your company has a volume licensing agreement, etc.) to maintain the Enterprise subscription.I recently wrote up a comparison between Visual Studio 2013 Premium w/MSDN and Visual Studio…
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04 Apr 2015

VS 2013 Premium vs. VS 2015 Enterprise

Visual Studio 2013, Visual Studio 2015
As I recently covered, Microsoft has announced that the Visual Studio Premium with MSDN and Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN editions will be combined into a single, new edition for Visual Studio 2015 – Visual Studio 2015 Enterprise with MSDN.If you have an active Visual Studio 2013 Premium w/MSDN subscription, you will be upgraded, for FREE, to the Visual Studio 2015 Enterprise w/MSDN edition when the final product becomes available later this year. Once your subscription runs out, however, you will have to start paying for the new Enterprise edition (because the Premium edition will no longer exist).Although the price…
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31 Mar 2015

Meet the Visual Studio 2015 Family

Visual Studio 2015
Today, Microsoft announced the editions of Visual Studio 2015 that will be available when Visual Studio 2015 is made available later this summer. You might recall that they announced Visual Studio Community Edition last November (read more about its features here). They have now gone a step further and revamped the remaining Visual Studio editions for the 2015 release.The short version of this announcement is that Visual Studio Premium and Visual Studio Ultimate are being combined into a singled, new edition – Visual Studio Enterprise with MSDN. With this change, the three primary Visual Studio editions are:Visual Studio Community 2015Visual…
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17 Jan 2015

Visual Studio 2015 CTP 5

Visual Studio 2015
In case you’re staying up to date with the latest releases of Visual Studio 2015 (still in CTP mode), the CTP 5 release is now available for download:Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate 2015 CTP (exe, iso) Remote Tools for Visual Studio 2015 CTP (x86, x64, arm) Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 SDK CTP (exe) Multibyte MFC Library for Visual Studio 2015 CTP (exe)This release contains some new features around debugging, diagnostics, the XAML language service and ASP.NET 5.XAML Language Service – this service now sits on top of the .NET Compiler Platform (“Roslyn”) providing you with a fast and reliable XAML editing…
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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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