13 Jul 2009

Microsoft Thrive

General News
I recently heard about a new site from Microsoft called “Thrive” and finally checked it out.  Here’s a quick blurb from the site: We’ve heard from lots of developers that times are tough. You’re doing more with less, applying your skills more broadly, and maybe even learning new tools. That’s why we created Thrive – a one-stop community hub that offers job postings, technical content, and community resources. So whether you’re seeking new ways to differentiate yourself on the job, or you need to re-tool your skills for that next big role, Thrive has the resources to help you get…
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10 Jul 2009

Silverlight 3 Ships

Silverlight
I don’t normally post about Silverlight since I tend to focus on Team System so much.  However, lately I have been spending a lot of time with Silverlight since I will be doing a presentation on it at our internal user group later this fall.  As such, I noticed that Silverlight 3 has officially shipped. Here’s a short list of new features available in v3.0: Ability to run Silverlight applications “out of browser” H.264 Navigation Framework DeepZoom SaveFileDialog (yeah!) WriteableBitmap Pixel Shaders ClearType (again, yeah!) Hardware Acceleration New Controls UI to UI Binding (third yeah!) New REST Networking Stack Mouse…
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27 May 2009

Omaha Team System User Group

TFS, User Group
Yesterday was a long day that ended on a great note – the Omaha Team System User Group meeting.  Mike Douglas, from Deliveron Consulting Services, presented on Installing and Configuring Team Foundation Server 2008.  Here is the synopsis: This presentation provides an overview of TFS 2008 and demonstrates best practices, lessons learned, and “gotchas” installing and configuring TFS 2008.  The overview explains the architecture and components of Team Foundation Server 2008 and recommended server configurations.  The demonstrations will include using the Best Practice Analyzer, setting user permissions and using the TFS Admin Tool, and creating and configuring a team project…
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18 May 2009

Visual Studio 2010 – Beta 1 Available

Visual Studio
As of today (May 18th, 2009) Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 (various SKUs) and .NET Framework 4 Beta 1 have shown up on the MSDN subscriber site. Here is a quick list of what shows up for the Enlish language (I'm not sure what other languages, if any, are yet available):.NET Framework 4 Beta 1 (ia64) .NET Framework 4 Beta 1 (x86 and x64) .NET Framework 4 Beta 1 (x86) .NET Framework 4 Client Profile Beta 1 (x86 and x64) .NET Framework 4 Client Profile Beta 1 (x86) Visual Studio 2010 Professional Beta 1 (x86) - DVD Visual Studio 2010…
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13 Apr 2009

Deleting Work Items in TFS – a UI

Team System, TFS, Utilities
If you work with Work Items in VSTS/Team Foundation Server then you’ve probably had the desire to delete a work item at some point.  Sounds easy enough, right?  Just right-click a work item and select… wait, there’s no Delete option?  That’s right – the Team Foundation Client does not include any functionality for deleting work items from TFS. Although it’s a tad inconvenient, you can delete work items from TFS by installing the Team Foundation Server Power Tools  (October 2008 release or greater).  Of the many features available as part of the power tools, there is a command called destroywi…
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09 Apr 2009

VSTS 2010 Feature List

Team System, Visual Studio
Brian Harry has started a series of posts detailing the new features in Visual Studio Team System 2010.  In his first post, he lists the high-level features along with associated blogs that provide further details.  He will be drilling into more detail with future posts but this is a great list if you’re just wanting an idea of what’s new in VSTS 2010.
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06 Apr 2009

Omaha Team System User Group

Team System, User Group, Utilities
Due to the recent birth of our new son, Zachary, I am somewhat late in getting this post on-line.  Although I am a little behind in getting this posted, I still want to get the word out about our last presentation at the Omaha Team System User Group. On March 24th, Farm Credit Services of America (FCSA) once again hosted the user group meeting.  Many thanks go out to Russ Wagner for his continued help and for accepting the position as co-leader of the Omaha Team System User Group! This meeting’s topic was presented by Jeremy Novak, a developer at…
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20 Mar 2009

IE 8, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight 3 Beta and More

Silverlight, Utilities, Visual Studio
For those of you who have been following the MIX conference this week, there have been several new (final and beta) releases.  So far, the ones most interesting to me personally include: Internet Explorer 8 (final) – there are some great improvements in this version of IE that you can read more about here. ASP.NET MVC 1.0 (final) - ASP.NET MVC enables you to build Model View Controller (MVC) applications by using the ASP.NET framework. ASP.NET MVC is an alternative, not a replacement, for ASP.NET Web Forms that offers the following benefits: Clear separation of concerns Testability - support for…
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16 Mar 2009

Omaha Team System User Group

User Group
The next Omaha Team System User Group meeting is going to be held Tuesday, March 24th at Farm Credit Services of America.  Jeremy Novak will be presenting on Acceptance/Service Level Testing using Remote Test Runner. Here are the details: Presentation: Acceptance/Service Level Testing with Remote Test Runner – Using an automated acceptance testing framework allows you to separate the task of creating test data from the test framework.  Your business owners can concentrate on creating the test data that gives them the assurance the product being tested meets their needs leaving developers to create the associated unit tests. This presentation…
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13 Mar 2009

Free ASP.NET MVC Tutorial

Visual Studio
Scott Guthrie recently announced a new ASP.NET MVC book that he co-authored with Scott Hanselman, Rob Conery, and Phil Haack.  Scott wrote the first chapter, a 185 page end-to-end tutorial that walks through the creation of a complete ASP.NET MVC application.  As part of his agreement with Wrox to write this chapter for free, he asked that they make the tutorial available as a free download.  Nice! You can read the details in Scott’s post here.  You can download the free PDF tutorial here.
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