Indent Guides in Visual Studio 2010

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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.NET Framework 4 Update (KB2468871)

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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Version Control Changes Coming to TFS v.Next

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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Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 Released

Today, Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 has been released for download from the MSDN Subscribers site.  General availability for download will start this Thursday, July 28th. From Jason Zanders’ blog post: Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 is a simplified, self-service development tool that enables you to create business applications quickly and easily for the desktop and cloud. I first announced LightSwitch at the VS Live conference in August 2010 and have since written a few posts including detailed tutorials. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it starts with the premise that most business applications consist of data and the screens that…
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Be Heard: UserVoice Site for Visual Studio/ALM

Recently, Brian Harry blogged about a set of two new UserVoice sites: One for Visual Studio and one for Visual Studio ALM.  However, just about as quickly as the two sites were created, they were merged – one site to rule them all!  The merged site is available here. The intent of this site is to provide a forum where you can provide suggestions and ideas for future anything that lives within the Visual Studio brand – e.g. Visual Studio, Visual Studio ALM, Team Foundation Server, Test and Lab Management, etc.  So, if you have any ideas that you’d love to…
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Visual Studio 2010 Extensions

Visual Studio 2010 is a great integrated development environment (IDE) for developing all types of applications in multiple programming languages.  One of the (many) advantages of using a mature IDE like Visual Studio is that it is highly extensible.  Visual Studio has had a great community of developer-built extensions for a long time now.  However, until recent times, it wasn’t always easy to locate and install the extensions you needed or simply wanted.  This has changed. About two and a half years ago (give or take – my history is a little fuzzy) Microsoft introduced the Visual Studio Gallery.  This…
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Web Standards Update for Visual Studio 2010 SP1

If you are using Visual Studio 2010 to create HTML 5 applications then you will appreciate the recently released Web Standards Update for Visual Studio 2010 SP1.  This update brings IntelliSense and validation to Visual Studio, based on the W3C specification, for HTML 5 and CSS3. As reported by Scott Hanselman, this update provides you with IntelliSense and validation for: HTML 5 features Video & related tags Audio & related tag New input types like email, url, date, etc. Drag & Drop support Accessibility standard WAI-ARIA Microdata Schema.org & more SEO friendly goodness Browser APIs Geo-Location - Location aware websites…
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Visual Studio Lab Management Guidance

It’s been a busy week for the ALM Rangers!  Not only was the Visual Studio Build Customization Guidance (read post) released but the Visual Studio Lab Management Guidance was released as well. Here’s some quick information from the project home page: Project Description This Visual Studio ALM Ranger project has the primary goal of delivering scenario based and hands-on guidance for the planning, setup, configuration and usage of Visual Studio Lab Management, backed by  custom VM Template automation for reference environments. Downloads The content is packaged in 3 separate zip files to give you the choice of selective downloads. The…
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Visual Studio Build Customization Guidance

A few days ago, the Visual Studio Build Customization Guidance was officially released! Here’s some quick information from the project home page: Project Description This Visual Studio ALM Ranger project has the primary goal of delivering scenario based and hands-on lab guidance for the customization and deployment of Team Foundation Build 2010 activities such as versioning, code signing, and branching. Downloads The solution is divided in separate packages to give you the choice of selective downloads. The default download is the first of the listed packages: Guidance contains scenario based practical guidance, frequently asked questions and quick reference posters Selected…
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Visual Studio/TFS 2010 Videos

If you’re looking for a great collection of videos for Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010, look no further than this post on the Visual Studio ALM + Team Foundation Server blog. The list of videos span the following categories: Testing Development Visualization, Modeling, and Architecture Team Foundation Server Lab Management Lots of great content for viewing.
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