A Developer's Life » Software Development, 42, and everything in between

18 Dec 2013

Visual Studio 2013 Settings Sync & Licensing

Visual Studio 2013

With Visual Studio 2013 you can now “roam” various Visual Studio settings across multiple development machines. If you’re not familiar with the synchronization capabilities in Visual Studio 2013, here’s the list of what currently syncs: Appearance (Theme, Fonts, and Colors) Environment Aliases Keyboard Shortcuts Startup Text Editor Syncing is enabled by default (in Tools->Options->Environment/Synchronized Settings) and can be initiated by signing into a Microsoft Account by clicking on the Sign in link in the upper-right corner of Visual Studio 2013. Once you logon with your Microsoft Account, you will notice that the account you’ve signed in with is also displayed…

13 Dec 2013

Build 2014 Conference Announced

Conferences

Today, Microsoft announced the date and location of their next Build conference (notice: they dropped the slashes they used to use when talking about //Build/). The conference will be held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco on April 2nd – 4th. No official agenda has yet been posted and, if it’s like last year’s Build conference, no agenda will be posted until the conference is upon us. However, it is pretty much assumed at this point that topics will cover what’s coming next with Windows, Windows Phone, Windows Azure, Windows Server, Visual Studio, etc. There is also speculation that…

04 Dec 2013

Technology Education And Literacy in Schools (TEALS)

Training

The U.S. is facing a shortage of computer science (CS) graduates. Every year, 80,000 positions requiring a CS degree go unfilled by domestic talent. This will cost the U.S. economy $500 billion over the next decade, which is detrimental to our economic competitiveness and national defense. Furthermore, 38,000 out of 45,000 high schools do not teach computer science. Only 0.7% of all AP tests taken last year were for computer science. TEALS is looking for tech professionals to team-teach a high school computer science class in an effort to build a sustainable CS program in every American high school. Classes are…

04 Dec 2013

Omaha Visual Studio 2013 Launch Event

User Group, Visual Studio 2013

The Omaha ALM User Group with Blue Cross Blue Shield Nebraska and Deliveron Consulting Services proudly invite you to the Omaha Visual Studio 2013 Launch Event. Join us for this special event where we will have: Latest Announcements and Highlights from the Microsoft Launch Free food and soda What’s new for developers in Visual Studio 2013 by Jeff Bramwell What’s new in ALM using Visual Studio 2013 by Mike Douglas RSVP now so we know to have enough food and available seating. Sponsors Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska (http://www.nebraskablue.com)Deliveron (http://www.deliveron.com/) Deliveron Consulting Services is a technology consulting company focused…

13 Nov 2013

Watch the Visual Studio 2013 Virtual Launch

Events, Visual Studio 2013

While I realize this is really short notice (as you can see in the screenshot above, the launch is only about an hour away) I thought I’d go ahead and post the link to view the Visual Studio 2013 Virtual Launch. The event will start today, November 13th, at 15:00 UTC (7:00am PST; 9:00am CST; 10:00am EST).

13 Nov 2013

Visual Studio 2012 & TFS 2012 Update 4 Available

Visual Studio 2012

The final release of Visual Studio 2012 Update 4 and Team Foundation Server Update 4 is now available for download. Here are the links: Visual Studio 2012 Update 4 (view details) Team Foundation Server 2012 Update 4 (view details) The Visual Studio 2012 update is available as a web installer (1.3MB); However, you can run the installer with the /layout switch if you would like to download the entire set of installation files (e.g. to install the update on multiple machines while downloading it only once). For example, press Windows+R and enter: {path}\vs2012.4.exe /layout (replacing {path} with the download path…

08 Nov 2013

TIP: Previous/Next Track Buttons in Windows 8.1

Tips, Windows 8.1

If you’re like me, you like to listen to music on your PC/laptop/tablet while you’re working. In my case, I happen to utilize the Windows 8.1 Xbox Music app (with Xbox Music Pass) which has become much better with the last couple of updates. There was, however, one feature that I really wanted – “previous/next track” keyboard shortcuts. Unfortunately, no shortcuts are provided out of the box with the Xbox Music app (or by Windows). Given this limitation, I had to turn to my keyboard. While there are many keyboards available with built-in previous/next track buttons, my keyboard is not…

06 Nov 2013

TIP: Visual Studio 2013 XAML Error

Tips, Visual Studio 2013, Windows 8.1

Since I upgraded to Windows 8.1 I’ve had various issues with Windows Store apps running in Visual Studio 2013. I would get strange debugger-related issues when I attempted to run an app though it would compile just fine. In fact, it didn’t matter if I ran the app locally or within the emulator, it would give me some strange debugger errors which were surfaced from non-managed code. I noticed that when I opened a XAML file in the XAML editor (within Visual Studio 2013) I would get the following error: I did some quick bing’n around for an answer and…

02 Nov 2013

TIP: Disable Spell Check and Autocorrect in Windows 8.1

Tips, Windows 8.1

For many of us, myself included, having automatic spell check integrated into most of the apps I use on a daily basis (including Windows Live Writer, which I am using to compose this post) has been a great productivity enhancer. However, there are certain scenarios where autocorrect, or automatically highlighting misspelled words, can be a nuisance. My native language is English and I have to admit that the spell check features in Windows 8.1 have worked pretty good for me. However, I have seen many reports of the spell check and autocorrect features being less than desirable for non-English languages…

25 Oct 2013

Where Did My Visual Studio 2013 Shortcuts Go?

Tips, Visual Studio 2013

If you have installed the recently-released Visual Studio 2013 you may have had to do a double take to find the Visual Studio 2013 shortcuts in your Start menu. In previous releases of Visual Studio, the Start menu folder the shortcuts are installed in have always been prefixed with “Microsoft”. For reasons unknown to me, Microsoft has removed the “Microsoft” prefix from the Visual Studio 2013 Start menu folder, as shown in the following screenshot: As you can see in the above screenshot, you have to scroll down a ways to find Visual Studio 2013. If you happen to have…