Free Microsoft Press eBooks

If you’re looking for a set of free eBooks (PDF and XPS formats) to catch up on some light reading, you might want to check these out:

• Free eBook: Moving to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 (10 chapters by Patrice Pelland, Pascal Paré, and Ken Haines)
• Free eBook: Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (10 chapters by Ross Mistry and Stacia Misner)
• Free eBook: Petzold’s Programming Windows Phone 7 (24 chapters by Charles Petzold)
• Free eBook: Own Your Future: Update Your Skills with Resources and Career Ideas from Microsoft (8 chapters by Katherine Murray)
• Free eBook: Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions (Second Edition) (6 chapters by Mitch Tulloch)
• Free eBook: First Look Microsoft Office 2010 (14 chapters by Katherine Murray)
• Free eBook: Windows 7 troubleshooting tips (short eBook by Mitch Tulloch)
• Free eBook: Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2 (9 chapters by Charlie Russel and Craig Zacker)
• Free eBook: Deploying Windows 7, Essential Guidance (10 chapters from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and 6 TechNet articles)

Visual Studio 2010 Feature Pack 2

Not too long ago, Brian Harry posted that Feature Pack 2 was imminent.  As of yesterday, Visual Studio 2010 Feature Pack 2 is available for download (here).

This feature pack is cumulative in that it will also install the features previously available in Feature Pack 1.  The highlights of Feature Pack 2 include:

Testing features:

• Use Microsoft Test Manager to capture and playback action recordings for Silverlight 4 applications.
• Create coded UI tests for Silverlight 4 applications with Visual Studio 2010 Premium or Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate.
• Edit coded UI tests using a graphical editor with Visual Studio 2010 Premium or Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate.
• Use action recordings to fast forward through manual tests that need to support Mozilla Firefox 3.5 and 3.6.
• Run coded UI tests for web applications using Mozilla Firefox 3.5 and 3.6 with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Premium or Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate.

Code visualization and modeling features (requires Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate):

• Use the Generate Code command to generate skeleton code from elements on UML class diagrams. You can use the default transformations, or you can write custom transformations to translate UML types into code.
• Create UML class diagrams from existing code.
• Explore the organization and relationships in C, C++, and ASP.NET projects by generating dependency graphs.
• Import elements from UML sequence diagrams, class diagrams, and use case diagrams as XMI 2.1 files that are exported from other modeling tools.
• Create links and view links from work items to model elements.
• Create layer diagrams from C or C++ code and validate dependencies.
• Write code to modify layer diagrams and to validate code against layer diagrams.

NOTE: Visual Studio 2010 Feature Pack 2 requires that the hotfix, KB2403277, be installed prior to installing the Feature Pack.  For details about what’s included in this hotfix, check out this link.

Related Links:

• Download the Visual Studio Feature Pack 2 here (MSDN subscribers only).
• Read Brian’s post here.
• Wondering what a Feature Pack is, check out this post.

Talks and Slides

Over the past few weeks, I’ve given six talks (on three subjects) at three different conferences.  Although the slide decks are pretty much the same between conferences, I thought I’d go ahead and post links to them all here in case anyone is looking for them.

Tulsa TechFest, November 2010

• What’s New in TFS 2010?
• Migrating to TFS 2010 – Lessons Learned
• Creating Quality Software: A Look at Visual Studio 2010 Testing Tools

Tyson Development Conference, October 2010

• VS2010 ALM – What’s In It for Me?
• Migrating to TFS 2010 – Lessons Learned

Heartland Developer Conference, September 2010

• Creating Quality Software: A Look at Visual Studio 2010 Testing Tools

Testing Tool Enhancements Coming

Brian Harry has blogged about the forthcoming Feature Pack 2.  If you make use of Coded UI Tests and/or Microsoft Test Runner, then you will be interested in this Feature Pack.  This Feature Pack, once released, will contain the following features:

• The ability to test Silverlight 4.0 applications (currently, browser-hosted applications only – out-of-browser applications will be supported in the future).
• Playback of recorded tests in Firefox.  You still have to record the test scripts using Internet Explorer (v7.0 or later), however, you can play them back in either browser.
• Coded UI Test Editor.  This new editor will allow you to manage certain aspects of your coded UI tests easier than before.

To get the full details, read Brian’s post here.