Visual Studio Toolbox (HD) - Channel 9

Watch as Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi joins Robert in this episode. Sayed wrote a best-selling book on the Microsoft Build Engine, showing you how to maximize your control over the build and deployment process. Here Sayed covers updates for his MSBuild book and discusses Visual Studio extensibility. He briefly touches on the typical extensibility model that Visual Studio has, and then he dives into some areas that extend Visual Studio, but not in the typical way. He also shows how you can easily create a project that completely replaces the built in build process. Links: Sayed's blog MSBuild book site Farticus VsixCompress BestPracticesChromeExtension Blog: Hijacking the Visual Studio Build Process  

In this episode, Robert is joined by Brad Sullivan, who shows us asynchronous debugging in Visual Studio 2013. This enhances your debugging experience in both .NET and Windows Store apps. Previously, it could be very difficult for a developer stopped at a breakpoint to know the asynchronous sequence of calls that brought them to the current location.  Now in Visual Studio 2013, the Call Stack window surfaces this information, factoring in new diagnostics information provided by the runtime.  For more information, check out Brad's blog post.

In this episode, Robert is joined by Andrew Hall. Andrew shows us the new Performance and Diagnostics hub in Visual Studio 2013, which makes it easy to find performance and diagnostics tools in one convenient location. He demos the Energy Consumption profiler, which enables developers to estimate how much power their app will cause the device to consume, and the XAML UI Responsiveness tool, which is focused on profiling the responsiveness of Windows Store apps implemented with XAML. Resources: Andrew Halls’ Build talk “Diagnosing issues in JavaScript Windows Store Apps with Visual Studio 2013” Pratap Lakshman’s Build talk “Visual Studio 2013 Diagnostics Tools for XAML-based Windows Store Apps” The ALM blog http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/tags/diagnostics/ The Diagnostics forum on MSDN http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vsdebug/threads

Visual Studio 2013 Preview is here with lots of exciting new features across Windows Store, Desktop and Web development. Dmitry Lyalin joins Robert for a whirlwind tour of this preview of the next release of Visual Studio, which is now available for download. Dmitry and Robert show the following in this episode: Recap of Team Foundation Service announcements from TechEd [02:00], including Team Rooms for collaboration, Code Comments in changesets, mapping backlog items to features IDE improvements [11:00], including more color and redesigned icons, undockable Pending Changes window, Connected IDE and synchronized settings Productivity improvements [17:00], including CodeLens indicators showing references, changes and unit test results, enhanced scrollbar, Peek Definition for inline viewing of definitions Web development improvements [28:00], including Browser Link for connecting Visual Studio directly to browsers, One ASP.NET Debugging and diagnostics improvements [37:00], including edit and continue in 64-bit projects, managed memory analysis in memory dump files, Performance and Diagnostics hub to centralize analysis tools [44:00], async debugging [51:00] Windows Store app development improvements, including new project templates [40:00], Energy Consumption and XAML UI Responsiveness Analyzers [45:00], new controls in XAML and JavaScript [55:00], enhanced IntelliSense and Go To Definition in XAML files [1:00:00] Visual Studio 2013 and Windows 8.1: Visual Studio 2013 Preview download Visual Studio 2013 Preview announcement Windows 8.1 Preview download Windows 8.1 Preview announcement Additional resources: Visual Studio team blog Brian Harry's blog ALM team blog Web tools team blog Modern Application Lifecycle Management talk at TechEd Microsoft ASP.NET, Web, and Cloud Tools Preview talk at TechEd Using Visual Studio 2013 to Diagnose .NET Memory Issues in Production What's new in XAML talk at Build What's new in WinJS talk at Build

In part 4 of a 4 part series on control vendors, Robert is joined at TechEd in New Orleans by Russ Fustino of ComponentOne. Russ shows us some of the many XAML controls ComponentOne provides for XAML development, both in WPF and Windows 8.

In part 3 of a 4 part series on control vendors, Robert is joined at TechEd in New Orleans by Seth Juarez of DevExpress. Seth shows us some of the many XAML controls DevExpress provides for XAML development, both in WPF and Windows 8.

In part 2 of a 4 part series on control vendors, Robert is joined at TechEd in New Orleans by Phil Japikse of Telerik. Phil shows us some of the many XAML controls Telerik provides for XAML development, both in WPF and Windows 8.

In part 1 of a 4 part series on control vendors, Robert is joined at TechEd in New Orleans by Jason Beres and Brian Lagunas of Infragistics. They show us some of the many XAML controls Infragistics provides for XAML development, both in WPF and Windows 8.

Robert is joined this week by Francis Cheung and Blaine Wastell of the Microsoft Patterns and Practices team. They show us Prism for Windows Store Apps. This project provides guidance to developers who want to create a Windows Store business app using C#, XAML, the Windows Runtime, and modern development practices. The guidance helps you implement MVVM with navigation and app life cycle management, validation, managed application data, and more. It also provides guidance on testing your app and tuning its performance. Francis and Blaine show how easy it is to get started using Prism in your Windows Store apps. Additional resources: Francis' blog Blaine's blog Brian Noyes' article Getting started with Prism for Windows Runtime

In this show, Robert is joined by Boris Scholl and Merwan Hade, Program Managers on the Visual Studio Azure Tools team. They provide a high level overview of the just announced new tools in Visual Studio for working with Azure Storage and performing diagnostics. These tools are available as part of the Windows Azure SDK 2.0. Merwan shows how the Table Explorer and Query Builder make it easier for developers to work with Azure storage. He shows adding and querying Azure table entities from Visual Studio. Boris shows how you can take advantage of Diagnostic Configuration and the Diagnostics Summary page to troubleshoot a deployed cloud service application. For more details on the Windows Azure SDK 2.0, check out Scott Guthrie's blog post and Cloud Cover episode 106.

Starting with Visual Studio 2012, Microsoft has moved to providing updates to Visual Studio on a regular cadence of shorter intervals. The second such update, Visual Studio 2012 Update 2, is now available. In addition to bug fixes, Update 2 contains new features in four areas: agile planning, quality enablement, line of business applications, and developer experience. In this episode, Orville McDonald and Dmitry Lyalin show us some of their favorite new Update 2 features.  For more information on Update 2, check out Soma's blog.

There's always new stuff to play with, whether a preview version of Windows, a CTP of Visual Studio, or a prerelease of an upcoming version of ASP.NET or Entity Framework. Getting ahead of the curve and learning early sounds great, but how do you do it? You don't want to install these early bits on your production machine and you may not have spare machines lying around. In this episode, Brian Randall shows us how virtualization provides the solution. Brian demonstrates how to create and manage multiple virtual machines and provides a variety of tips and tricks as well as best practices. If you want to hear from an expert on how virtualization means a better life for developers, check out this episode.

In this show, John Papa and Pete Brown join Robert for a freewheeling discussion about building great apps. They cover a range of topics including your icon and tile, how you app looks in the Windows Store, how you display information in an app layout, gestures, design, and more.

In this show, Robert is joined by Julie Lerman, the author of several highly acclaimed Entity Framework books. Julie shares a number of Entity Framework tips and tricks including: Overriding the DBContext SaveChanges method [02:00] EntityFramework Power Tools [19:00] Configuring 1:1 Relationships [27:00] How to Avoid Accidentally Adding Data [34:30] Debugging [47:15] While taping this, Robert's microphone malfunctioned. Fortunately, Julie's microphone picked him up. That is why his sound is not up to the normal quality and level.

In this show Robert discusses managing state in Windows Store apps. When a user switches away from an app in Windows 8, Windows suspends the app. When the user switches back to the app, it looks like it was running all along. Windows can terminate a suspended app if it needs to free up memory for other apps or if it needs to save power. When the user starts the app again, he or she will want the app to resume where it left off. Robert shows how to accomplish this by saving and restoring state. He shows what code you need for XAML apps to do this and where that code goes.   You can find the sample app Robert used here. He also wrote up this topic on his blog.