Visual Studio Toolbox (HD) - Channel 9

In this episode, Karsten Januszewski joins us to talk about the latest version of the Visual Studio Achievements extension. Once you install this extension, you can unlock achievements based on things you do in Visual Studio. The latest version adds nineteen new achievements oriented toward Windows Store app development. These new achievements can be earned in JavaScript, C#, VB, and C++. Some examples include: I Like To Move It Move It, which is earned by using the accelerometer, and The Play Is The Thing, which is earned by using the AutoPlay contract.

In this episode, Robert revisits the Windows 8 line of business app he wrote. This app provides the ability for employees to create and submit expense reports—and for managers to view and approve or reject them. Robert first reviews the app as you last saw it and then discusses what changes he made to the app's user interface and why he thinks those changes resulted in a much better app. He also announces that the app is now available for your downloading pleasure on CodePlex.

In this episode, learn how to use Azure Mobile Services in a Windows 8 app. Robert shows how to create a new mobile service and an accompanying database as well as how to connect a Windows Store app to the mobile service. He then demonstrates how to query, add, update, and delete items in the database. You can find the app Robert used here.

Starting with Visual Studio 2012, Microsoft has moved to providing update to Visual Studio on a regular cadence of shorter intervals. The first such update, Visual Studio 2012 Update 1, is now available. In addition to bug fixes, Update 1 contains new features in four areas: Windows development, SharePoint development, agile teams, and continuous quality. In this episode, Brian Keller shows us some of his favorite new Update 1 features. For more information on Update 1, check out the following: Soma's blog Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 Now Available! Brian Harry's blog Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 is available  

The Productivity Power Tools is an extension pack that delivers powerful tools for improved productivity. With 1.5 million downloads, the Visual Studio 2010 version is the second most downloaded extension in the Visual Studio Gallery. The Visual Studio 2012 version was released in early November and in this episode we are joined by Murali Krishna Hosabettu Kamalesha to look into several features added to the extension: Quick Tasks, Power Commands, and Color Printing. Murali also reviews some of the more popular features that are in both the 2010 and 2012 versions.

Mei Liang returns to the show this week to demonstrate the latest version of the Sample Browser extension for Visual Studio. This extension provides a way for developers to search and download more than 3500 code samples from within Visual Studio, including over 700 Windows 8 samples and more than 1000 All-In-One Code Framework customer-driven code samples. Mei shows us not only the extension, but also the standalone version of the Sample Browser.

In this episode, Robert shows you how to add SQLite support to your Windows Store apps. SQLite is a free open source library that provides a self-contained transactional SQL database engine. Watch as Robert demonstrates how to setup a project to use SQLite as well as how to query, add, update,  and delete items in the database. Check out Robert's blog post to see how to create the sample app he uses.

In this episode, Matthew Johnson shows us the Visual Studio 2012 Color Theme Editor extension. With this extension, you can customize the Visual Studio 2012 color palette, choosing from several available themes or creating your own in order to customize colors used for menus, toolbars, tabs, the text editor, and other environment items. Already hugely popular, this new extension is a must have.

IntelliTrace is a great tool. It records and traces your app's code execution and stores this information in a trace file. You can open up that trace file later on and figure out why your app isn't behaving as expected. This can save you huge amounts of time during development. But what happens when the app goes into production and issues arise? In this episode, Larry Guger shows us how you can use the free standalone IntellliTrace Collector to gather this information from apps running in production. Larry shows us how to download the tool, configure it to collect data, and then how to analyze that data in Visual Studio.

There have been a lot of recent developments in the Windows Azure world and those developments are what we've lately been covering on this show. In this episode, however, Dennis Angeline joins us as we take a step back and focus on how Visual Studio developers can get started using Windows Azure. Tune in as Dennis takes an MVC app and shows us how to extend both the app and its data to Windows Azure.

In this episode, Josh Twist and Nick Harris introduce us to Windows Azure Mobile Services. This makes it incredibly easy to connect a scalable cloud backend to your client and mobile applications. It enables you to easily store structured data in the cloud that can span both devices and users and integrate it with user authentication as well as send out updates to clients via push notifications. Josh, with assistance from Nick, shows how to add these capabilities to any Windows 8 app in minutes.

In this episode, Pete Brown (Windows Developer Evangelist and XAML and Gadget Guy) shows us how to write Windows Store apps that use the .NET Micro Framework and advanced socket networking to talk to devices like robots.

In this episode, Jim Nakashima and Saurabh Bhatia show us how to build Office and SharePoint apps using "Napa" Office 365 Development Tools and Visual Studio. If you have an Office 365 account, a browser, and "Napa" you can build apps for Office documents, mail items, and SharePoint. Jim and Saurabh walk us through several examples and then show how to open and deploy Office app projects using Visual Studio.

In this episode, Rocky Lhotka joins us to talk about CSLA.NET. CSLA is a software development framework that helps you build a powerful, maintainable business logic layer for Windows, Web, service-oriented, and workflow applications. Its primary goal is to help you implement, manage, and reuse business logic. Rocky introduces CSLA.NET and then shows us how the upcoming version supports async programming and Windows 8 apps.

In this episode, Beth Massi joins us to demonstrate some cool new features in LightSwitch. First, she shows us how LightSwtich now has built-in support for OData. Then, she shows us how to use the LightSwitch HTML Client Preview to build a cross-browser, mobile web client.