TFS 2013 Power Tools Released

As of today, you can download the just-released Team Foundation Server 2013 Power Tools (compatible with TFS 2013 RC). If you’re not familiar with the TFS Power Tools, and you spend any amount of time working with TFS on a day-to-day basis, I highly recommend you check these out.
This release is comprised of four separate downloads:

• Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2013 Power Tools - this is a collection of multiple tools, including:
• Best Practices Analyzer (TFS application tier only)
• Check-in Policies
• Process Template Editor
• Storyboard Shapes
• Team Explorer Enhancements
• Team Foundation Power Tool Command Line (tfpt.exe)
• Test Attachment Cleaner
• Windows PowerShell Cmdlets
• Windows Shell Extensions
• Work Item Templates
• Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2013 Build Extensions - the Team Foundation Build Extensions provide the ability to execute Ant or Maven 2 builds from Team Foundation Server 2013 and publish the results of the build along with any associated JUnit test results back to Team Foundation Server.
• Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2013 MSSCCI Provider 32-bit - enables integrated use of Team Foundation Version Control with products that do not support Team Explorer integration. Refer to the above link for more information about what products can make use of this provider.
• Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2013 MSSCCI Provider 64-bit - this version of the MSSCCI Provider is for 64-bit products using MSSCCI such as the 64-bit version of MatLab. The majority of applications using a MSSCCI provider typically require the 32-bit version

Navigate to the above links to get more details on each of the available tools.

Visual Studio 2013 RC Released

This post is a couple of days behind but I thought I’d go ahead and put out a few links to help spread the word a little more :-). 
As of September 9th, Visual Studio 2013 RC (Release Candidate) was made available for download on the Visual Studio web site.  This is a “go live” release which means you can run Visual Studio 2013 RC in a production environment and there will be a supported upgrade path to Visual Studio 2013 RTM.
Visual Studio 2013 is expected to RTM along with Windows 8.1 GA (General Availability) which is slated for October “18th”.
To get an idea of what’s included in the latest version of Visual Studio, check out these posts:

• Announcing the Visual Studio 2013 Release Candidate (Somasegar’s blog)
• Visual Studio 2013 RC available now! (The Visual Studio Blog)
• What’s New in Visual Studio 2013 (Visual Studio)
• Team Foundation Service Update – Sept 9 (Brian Harry’s blog)

The following software is now available for download (here):
Visual Studio 2013 RC

• Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 RC
• Visual Studio Premium 2013 RC
• Visual Studio Professional 2013 RC
• Visual Studio Test Professional 2013 RC
• Team Foundation Server 2013 RC

Visual Studio Express 2013 RC

• Visual Studio Express 2013 RC for Web
• Visual Studio Express 2013 RC for Windows Desktop
• Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Express 2013 RC

Additional Software

• Team Explorer
• Team Explorer Everywhere for TFS
• .NET Framework 4.5.1
• Agents for Visual Studio 2013
• IntelliTrace Collector for Visual Studio
• Feedback Client for TFS
• Remote Tools for Visual Studio 2013
• Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2013
• Visual Studio Shell
• Visual Studio SDK
• Multibyte MFC Library for Visual Studio 2013 RC
• Modeling SDK for Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 RC
• Microsoft Build Tools RC

Note that Visual Studio 2013 RC is not compatible with Windows 8.1 Preview.  You will need to install Windows 8.1 RTM for use with Visual Studio 2013 RC.
If you run into issues, have questions, or ideas, you can submit/ask them here:

• Connect (for bugs) & VS Feedback Tool (for bugs filed from within VS)
• UserVoice (for ideas/suggestions)
• Forums (for Q&A)
• Support (for in-production use only)

Support and Suggestion Links for Visual Studio and Windows Phone

This post is as much for my benefit as it is for anyone else :-)  Although I have frequented all of the sites referred to below, it sometimes takes me a minute or two to come up with the link.  Being able to reference this blog post just might save me a little time in the future.  Along with that, it may also point out a few support sites that you weren’t aware of.

The links below are specific to Visual Studio and Windows Phone.  As these are two of the most common technologies that I interact with on a daily basis, I thought I’d point out a few shortcuts on where to submit feature ideas, bugs, as well as where to ask questions.

Visual Studio

Visual Studio UserVoice – Do you have a great idea that you feel should be implemented in Visual Studio?  Add your idea to the Visual Studio UserVoice site and let others vote on it.  You can also vote and/or comment on other’s suggestions.

Visual Studio Forums – Ask your tough questions here.  There are literally hundreds of thousands of answered questions within the Visual Studio forums so there is a good chance your question has already been answered.  This link covers a lot of Microsoft development products so here are a few links that are more focused on specific products:

• Team Foundation Server
• Visual Studio

Microsoft Connect – If you have discovered a bug within Visual Studio (or think you have discovered a bug) then file it within the Visual Studio Microsoft Connect site.  From here, you will be able to track the status of the bug and any possible workarounds that are posted.

Windows Phone

Windows Phone Consumer Links

Windows Phone – Of course, the best place to start searching for support information for Windows Phone is the main site itself – windowsphone.com.  This site provides all sorts of information regarding your Windows Phone as well as many links to tutorials, blogs, forums, etc.

Windows Phone UserVoice – Windows Phone is great but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement.  Add suggestions for new features in Windows Phone and/or vote and comment on existing feature ideas (e.g. such as this one regarding a keyboard shortcut that I just created).

Windows Phone 8 Support – This site provides a preset list of “how to” and troubleshooting categories, each with a set of linked topics available for viewing:

Windows Phone 8 Forums – for those more difficult situations where you can’t seem to find the answer, check out the Windows Phone forums.  Odds are, someone will be able to help you out.

Windows Phone Developer Links

Windows Phone Dev Center – this site is a great resource for Windows Phone developers.  It provides access to videos, samples, blogs, news, and related events.

Windows Phone Development Forums – whereas the Windows Phone 8 Forums link above is more geared toward consumer-oriented questions, the Windows Phone Development Forums relies upon the developer community to help with those tough-to-answer Windows Phone development questions.

[Updated: added a couple more links based on feedback]

Get TeamCompanion for Free (if you act fast)!

With the launch of Visual Studio 2012, Ekobit sim-ships TeamCompanion 4.7.  If you are not familiar with TeamCompanion, it integrates many of the Team Foundation client features within Microsoft Outlook.  For example, with TeamCompanion, you can easily create Work Items with an e-mail (or vice- versa).  You can also create new Outlook Tasks from Work Items.  There are many other features, such as scheduled Work Item queries, available within TeamCompanion that can simply make life easier for those of us who spend their days working with TFS (click here for further details).

If you act fast – i.e. between now and Friday, September 14th at midnight PDT (UTC-7:00) – you can get a free TeamCompanion license!  There are three ways in which to do this:

1. Follow TeamCompanion on Twitter and retweet the announcement tweet as soon as possible.
2. Like TeamCompanion on Facebook and then share the post announcing the contest.
3. Join the TeamCompanion circle of friends on Google+

Read this blog post for more information regarding the giveaway.

Visual Studio 2012 / TFS 2012 Links

If you’ve been following the progress of Visual Studio 2012 closely chances are you’ve already downloaded the recently released Release Candidate.  If not, then I’ve provided a handy list of links below to get you started.  I’ve also included some handy reference and guidance links as well.

Visual Studio 2012 Release Candidate

• Visual Studio 2012 RC downloads home page
• Visual Studio Ultimate 2012 RC
• Visual Studio Premium 2012 RC
• Visual Studio Professional 2012 RC
• Visual Studio Test Professional 2012 RC
• Visual Studio Express 2012 RC for Web
• Visual Studio Express 2012 RC for Windows 8
• IntelliTrace Collector for Visual Studio 2012 RC
• Agents for Visual Studio 2012 RC
• Feedback Client for TFS RC 
• Remote Tools for Visual Studio 2012 RC 
• Visual Studio 2012 RC Shell
• Visual Studio 2012 RC SDK
• Visual Studio 2012 RC Language Pack

.NET Framework

• .NET 4.5 RC

Team Foundation Server 2012

• Team Foundation Server 2012 RC
• Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Express 2012 RC
• Team Explorer for Visual Studio 2012 RC
• Team Explorer for Visual Studio 2012 RC Language Pack
• Team Explorer Everywhere for TFS RC

Team Foundation Service

This is not a download but I’m including it anyway since it’s another offering in the works by Microsoft related to TFS.  If you are not familiar with the Team Foundation Service it is essentially “TFS in the Cloud” (in simplistic terms – you can read more about it here).  To sign up for a free preview account, visit the TFS Preview site.

Support

Getting Help - To help with any questions you might have, please refer to the following:

• MSDN Forums - get answers to your questions from the community

Providing Feedback - To provide feedback (bugs, suggestions, etc.) for any of the Visual Studio 2012 RC products, utilize the corresponding Microsoft Connect site:

• Visual Studio
• LightSwitch
• Blend

Reference & Guidance

• Visual Studio 2012 RC Documentation - includes walkthroughs, samples, training kits, etc.
• Visual Studio 2012 ALM Rangers Guidance – includes a large variety of guidance developed by the Visual Studio ALM Rangers.  The following diagram depicts the type of guidance being provided:
  
  

Visual Studio Achievements–Nice Idea, But…

Today, on The Official Microsoft Blog, Karsten (of Channel 9) posted about achievements being brought to Visual Studio.  Visual Studio Achievements (beta) is a Visual Studio add-in enabling developers to unlock various badges as they do what they do everyday – write code in Visual Studio.  There are currently 32 achievements, across six categories, waiting to be unlocked.  The categories include:

• Customizing Visual Studio
• Don’t Try This At Home
• Good Housekeeping
• Just For Fun
• Power Coder
• Unleashing Visual Studio

You can read the full list of achievements here.

As you unlock various achievements, you will earn points and your progress will be tracked the Channel 9 achievements leaderboard site.  You can tweet about your achievements and share them on Facebook, if you like.  There is also a Visual Studio Achievements widget that you can make use of to show off your achievements on your own blog.

While this is an interesting idea, it is not a new one.  In fact, the Channel 9 team at Microsoft was inspired by this post from Rudi on the While True blog and the subsequent discussion on Reddit.

All of this is done in the name of gamifying your development tasks.  While I enjoy (most) games as much as the next person, I am not sure this is the approach I would have taken with this add-in.  I suppose what I might have done differently is to build a set of achievements that more accurately measure your coding/Visual Studio skills and improvements to those skills over time.  While some of the current achievements appear to sway you toward learning various Visual Studio capabilities and features (e.g. the Stubby achievement for generating a method stub nine times) others seem to be counter-productive (e.g. having 50 projects in a solution).

If I were to champion an add-in like this at my place of employment, I’d rather see a list of achievements something like the following:

• Implements the SOLID principles in at least 5 solutions.
• Implements a well-known UI pattern in at least 5 solutions (e.g. MVP, MVC, MVVM, Presenter First, etc.).
• Creates a Layer Diagram in Visual Studio to enforce patterns (such as those listed above) in at least 5 solutions.
• Creates a Single-File Generator (Custom Tool) in Visual Studio to auto-generate code to solve a specific problem.
• Masters Visual Studio keyboard shortcuts by utilizing shortcut keys x number of times within a certain timespan.
• Implements Code Analysis in at least 5 solutions.
• Building on the above, keeping Code Analysis warnings consistently near zero.
• Writes unit tests and consistently keeps code coverage near 100%.
• Following some form of well-known coding standards (e.g. .NET naming conventions).
• Etc.

The above list could go on and on but the general idea is that the achievements would be more geared toward actually measuring how well one utilizes Visual Studio and how well they practice “good” engineering principles.

Now with all that said, I am not taking anything away from what the Channel 9 team has created.  The Visual Studio Achievements can definitely add a new dimension of fun to the everyday task of writing code.  If you want to have a little fun with your code development, then this add-in appears to handle this goal nicely.  If, however, you are looking for something a little more serious, then you will probably need to look elsewhere and/or come up with something on your own.

Maybe the Visual Studio Achievements add-in will provide an extensibility API and anyone can create any types of achievements they like (presumably posted to another leaderboard)?  Since this is a beta release, maybe they are planning on adding more “serious” achievements to future releases?  Whatever the case, nice job Channel 9!

Visual Studio 2010 GDR

A new update has been released for Visual Studio 2010 (client only) called the “Visual Studio 2010 SP1 TFS Compatibility GDR”.  There are several fixes and improvements in this update, including (as taken from Brian Harry’s blog post):

• The update gets its name from the fact that it includes changes necessary to the Visual Studio 2010 client to allow it to work with a TFS 11 server – including the Team Foundation Service Preview (a.k.a. TFS on Windows Azure).
• The biggest “news” is the addition of support for multi-line test steps in Microsoft Test Manager.  It’s mentioned in the #1 suggestion for Visual Studio Test and Lab Management.
• KB2522890 – Team Explorer Crashes when opening build from TFS 2008.
• KB2552300 - Gated Check-ins fail with the “Preserve local Changes” option.
• KB2561827 – Diff/Merge closes with unhandled exception when comparing two files.

Pre-requisite: Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 must be installed prior to installing this update.

Download: This update can be downloaded here.

Once the update has been installed, the version for DevEnv.exe should be 10.0.40219.1.

//build/ Observations from the Outside–Day 1

Like so many others, I was not able to attend the //build/ conference (formerly known as the Professional Developers Conference or PDC).  However, I did have the opportunity to watch the streaming keynote live and I’ve also spent a good portion of the day watching various twitter, Facebook, and blog posts from those who are attending.  With so much coming out of Microsoft in one day it’s hard to keep up with everything being announced and talked about so I thought I’d put a few notes together around today’s event.

The word of the day is BOLD

I didn’t actually count the number of times the word “bold” was used during the keynote session earlier today but I can safely say it was used a lot.  In general, it was used in reference to Microsoft making a “bold, no compromises move”.  I have to admit, after seeing the various demonstrations from the keynote, I agree that Microsoft is making a bold move and rethinking Windows as a platform.  A quick (non-complete) list of some of the things demonstrated include:

• The new Windows 8 Metro-style UI
• Windows 8 running on multiple form factors including desktop PCs and various tablet PCs (running ARM-based processors)
• Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview 3
• Visual Studio “11” (v.Next) Express
• A new framework for developing software for Windows
• Windows Application Store
• Windows 8 using less memory with fewer (default) processes than Windows 7
• Picture-based login
• Support for inter-application integration provided directly within Windows 8
• Spell checking at the OS level (i.e. spell checking everywhere)
• Fast boot

Developing for Windows 8

With Windows 8 Microsoft introduce a new programming platform known as the Windows Runtime – or WinRT.  Developers can now utilize their language of choice when building applications targeted against Windows 8.  Regardless of which language you choose, which now includes JavaScript, the WinRT APIs will be reflected into your language of choice and made available for use.

One thing to note is that Silverlight (or WPF for that matter) was only mentioned during the keynote as a “legacy” technology (in not so many words).  They did demonstrate running a Silverlight application running on Windows 8 and was able to “Metro-fy” it with a minimal amount of code modification.  It seems that the rumors of HTML5/CSS + JavaScript being the preferred approach for developing Metro-style applications rather than Silverlight have been verified.

A pre-release version of Visual Studio “11” was also demonstrated and used for the various coding examples.  The keynote did not go into the details of what’s new in Visual Studio so I will post more details on Visual Studio as they are made clear.

A new (pre-release) version of Expression Blend 5 was demonstrated now with support for HTML and CSS!  That is an awesome addition to the Microsoft development tools suite.

Head in the Cloud

Windows Live integration is front and center in Windows 8.  Modifying your applications to interact with SkyDrive, for example, requires minimal coding and is supported directly by Windows 8.  Windows Live integration is present throughout Windows 8 with my favorite feature (although it wasn’t directly demonstrated) being the ability to synchronize your various settings (e.g. history, passwords, themes, etc.) via the cloud so they follow you around from device-to-device.

The “Giveaway”

If you’ve followed the PDC for the last couple of years you know that Microsoft has given some type of hardware to each of the (paying) attendees to help gain developer support.  A couple of years ago, at PDC10, it was an Acer Table PC.  Last year, it was a Windows Phone 7 device (I happened to be there and received an LG-900 Windows Phone 7 device).  Once again, this year Microsoft did not disappoint and provided each of the attendees with a Samsung Windows 8 Developer Tablet (or PC as Microsoft calls it).  To add to the already great gift, AT&T threw in a year of free 3G service (2GB/month)!  Not a bad deal for the attendees!

That’s Awesome!  When Can I Have It?

In typical Microsoft fashion, no release dates were announced.  However, they did provide the “Path to ‘RTM’” as shown in the slide below:

Although we don’t know yet when the final bits will be made available for download, you can download the Windows 8 Developer Preview now.  There are three flavors of Windows 8 downloads available:

• Windows Developer Preview with Developer Tools – English, 64-bit (x64) – 4.8GB
• Windows Developer Preview – English, 64-bit (x64) – 3.6GB
• Windows Developer Preview – English, 32-bit (x86) – 2.8GB

You can download any or all of the above releases here.

More to Come!

Keep in mind that my observations below are a small part of what was seen and demonstrated today.  I’m looking forward to the next few days of the //build/ conference and probably a few nights of little sleep :-)  I have the preview version of Windows 8 downloaded and am preparing to install it as I type this post (I’m currently creating a bootable USB drive for the image).  I have no doubt that I, along with thousands of others, will be blogging their experiences over the next days, weeks, and months ahead.  It is going to be a fun ride!

Team Explorer Profile Manager–Take 1

If there is one thing I can generally count on doing at least once a day it’s firing up Visual Studio 2010.  Along with Visual Studio 2010 I am also a heavy user of Team Foundation Server 2010.  I use it at my “day job” as well as at home on “side” projects.  At work, I switch among multiple Team Project Collections and Team Projects relatively frequently.  At home, more so because I tend to work with several CodePlex projects as well as local TPCs and Team Projects on my development laptop.

[UPDATE: A new release is available – see Update History below…]

If this sounds like you then you’ve no doubt experienced the pain of having to continually switch TPCs in Visual Studio Team Explorer.  It goes something like this:

1. Fire up Visual Studio 2010
2. Click on the Team Explorer tab only to realize that the project you need is in another TPC
3. Click on the “Connect to Team Project” icon and switch TPCs and select the desired Team Projects
4. Click the confirmation dialog warning you that connecting to another TPC will close all queries, etc.
5. While working, you decide to open another instance of Visual Studio to take a look at a different project
6. You click on the Team Explorer tab only to realize, that once again, you’re connected to the wrong TPC so you repeat steps 2 – 4
7. And so on…

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could simply launch Visual Studio and have it connect to the TPC and Team Projects you need from the start?  Well, that’s where the Team Explorer Profile Manager (TEPM) comes in.  I wrote this utility to handle exactly this scenario.

What Is TEPM?

Once you run TEPM it sits in the Windows “system tray” area waiting for you to right-click on it.  Once you do, you will see a menu structure something like this:

Based on the menu items seen above you might have guessed that TEPM works on the basis of “profiles”.  A profile is simply a snapshot of the Team Explorer settings taken at a given time.  Here’s how it works:

1. Fire up Visual Studio 2010 (TEPM currently works only with Visual Studio 2010)
2. Connect to the desired TPC and select the active Team Projects you wish to work with
3. Right-click on the TEPM icon to get the above menu and select “Manage Profiles”.  This will display the following dialog allowing you to name the profile for the current Team Explorer settings:
   
   
   
4. Once you’ve entered a profile name (using only valid filename characters) click on the Copy button to create the profile.

Repeat the above steps for the various TPCs and Team Projects you regularly work with.

Now, when you right-click on the TEPM icon to get the above menu, hover over the Launch Saved Profile menu option to display a list of profiles.  For example:

Notice in the screenshot above, I have six profiles configured.  Selecting a profile will launch Visual Studio 2010 with the correct Team Explorer settings.  So the next time you need to fire up Visual Studio 2010 to work in a TPC different from what you’re currently working in simply right-click and launch!

Some Other Info

This is a “v1.0” product.  It works (at least for me) and should work for you.  You may encounter bugs and, if you do, I would really like to know about them so I can fix them.  The first time you run TEPM it will create a “baseline” profile that matches your current settings.  You can revert to this baseline at any time by selecting the Launch Baseline Profile menu item.  You can also reset the baseline to a specific profile by clicking on the Create Baseline button in the “Manage Profiles” dialog shown above.

Currently, there is no option for running this utility when you first logon to Windows.  I plan to add this soon but just haven’t done it yet.[done]  If there are any other options that you’d like to see, please let me know.

There is also no installation package at this time (e.g. no MSI).  I plan to add that soon as well but for now, the download is simply a ZIP file that contains a single EXE.  Copy the EXE to the desired location on your machine and double-click it to run it.[done]

Download

Eventually, this will be hosted on the Visual Studio Code Gallery.  Until I get it there, you can download the ZIP file from here.

Please let me know if you have any questions, suggestions, criticisms, etc.

Update History

• 30 August 2011 – Miscellaneous updates, including:
• Now packaged as a setup file.  You no longer need to manually copy the file to a directory to install it.
• Added a Settings dialog with the option to automatically run TEPM on startup
• Double-clicking the TEPM icon will now launch Visual Studio 2010 using the current profile
• Removed the “Copy Current Profile” menu option and merged into “Manage Profiles”
• 24 August 2011 – Version 1.0 Published

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 the 2nd level of indentation to be a red, dashed line (instead of a teal, dotted line).  This allows me to easily see the “top” level of the current method I’m currently modifying even if I can’t see the top or bottom curly braces for the method.

There are various other options that you can play with as well.  Just go to Tools->Options and select Indent Guides.  This is a basic extension but is very well done and the author has been very responsive to questions posted on the Visual Studio Gallery link.

Read more about this extension and/or download it here.

.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 2010 error: "Error 1 error MSB4014: The build stopped unexpectedly because of an internal failure"
• 2461678 A .NET Framework 4-based WPF application crashes if the source object of a data binding in a control is an element that is defined outside the name scope of the control

There are also several other issues that have been resolved in this GDR which are covered here.

Get this update here and/or read more about it on Buck Hodges’ blog here.

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 it knows (about the status of the mapped files).  If you delete a file on your local file system, TFS has no idea that the file has been deleted.  If you modify a file on your local file system (assuming you remove the “read only” attribute) then TFS has no idea about that change.  These examples, along with others not listed, adds to some of the greatest confusion when learning to use TFS version control for the first time.

On the up-side, the beauty of the server workspace is that TFS will send down only the files necessary based upon your request (i.e. “Get Latest”).  This can be very useful if you’re working across a WAN/VPN connection where bandwidth is at a premium.

Enough about the current state of affairs.  Now, the good part… Brian Harry has posted some details around some of the enhancements being made to version control with the next release of Team Foundation Server (a.k.a. “Dev11”).  In this post, he discusses the addition of the “Local Workspace” which allows you to make changes directly to the files within your file system and TFS will automagically recognize and handle those changes.  This will provide SVN-style version control capabilities with TFS.  Server workspaces will still exist but the local workspace will become the default.

Check out Brian’s post for all the nitty gritty details.

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 users interact with. LightSwitch simplifies attaching to data with data source wizards or creating data tables with table designers. It also includes screen templates for common tasks so you can create clean interfaces for your applications without being a designer. Basic applications can be written without a line of code. However, you can add custom code that is specific to your business problem without having to worry about setting up classes and methods.

Read the full details on Jason’s blog here.

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 see within Visual Studio, be sure to post them and then build support for your idea by getting others to vote for it.

Keep in mind that if you need to file information regarding a bug you should continue to use Microsoft’s Connect site.

The Visual Studio UserVoice link again is: http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio

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 on-line “store” for Visual Studio provides “quick access to tools, controls, and templates to help you get the most out of Visual Studio”.  With the gallery came not only the ability to easily search for extensions and install them but also the ability to easily upload new extensions that you build yourself.  There are now over 2,500 extensions available for download in the Visual Studio Gallery – some free and some commercial (i.e. not free).  If you’re looking to extend Visual Studio for a specific scenario, check the gallery first because you just might find what you’re looking for.

With that said, there is a set of extensions that I always go back and install any time I spin up a new developer machine.  I’ve listed these below in case you see something that you’re not familiar with and want to give it a try.

• NuGet Package Manager - A collection of tools to automate the process of downloading, installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing packages from a VS Project.  At the time of this post, there was 1,947 packages available for installation via NuGet (including the ChuckNorrisFramework :-).  Visit http://docs.nuget.org/ for more details.
• PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2010 - PowerCommands 1.0 is a set of useful extensions for the Visual Studio 2010 IDE.
• Productivity Power Tools – A set of extensions to Visual Studio Professional (and above) which improves developer productivity.
• Team Foundation Server Power Tools March 2011 - Power Tools are a set of enhancements, tools and command-line utilities that increase productivity of Team Foundation Server scenarios.
• Web Standards Update for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 SP1 - Adds CSS3 support and updates the HTML5 IntelliSense and validation including new JavaScript API's.

I actually have several other extensions installed, but the ones I’ve listed above are the ones that I make sure I put back on every time.  If you’re not familiar with the above extensions, click on the link and check them out.  You just may find them to be as useful as I do.

If there is a favorite extension that you can’t live without, tell us about it in the comments section below.  It may turn out to be one that I can’t live without.

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 are a clear, growing trend and now you've got full IntelliSense and validation within Visual Studio. For a nice sample, view source on the IE9 test drive demo.
• Local Storage – IE has been supporting local storage from IE8, so now Visual Studio will provide you with full-fidelity IntelliSense to create sites which can save state within the browser. For sample of this, do a view source on HTML5 Demo Site

CSS3

• 2D Transforms
• 3D Transforms
• Animations
• Background & Borders
• Basic Box Model
• Basic UI
• Behavior
• Color
• Flexible Box Layout
• Fonts
• Generated Content for Paged Media
• Hyperlink Presentation
• Line
• Lists
• Marquee
• Media Queries
• Multi Column
• Namespaces
• Paged Media
• Presentations Levels
• Ruby
• Selectors
• Speech
• Syntax
• Template Layout
• Text
• Transitions

You can read the full details from his blog posts here.

You can download the update (~1MB) here.  A few people have had issues with the update claiming they need to install Visual Studio 2010 SP1 when, in fact, they already have SP1 installed.  If you have a similar experience, you might try the solution provided by Wouter vanEck on the Reviews tab, summarized here:

• Download and install the ORCA tool from Microsoft (this is a MSI editor)
• Once installed, start ORCA and open the downloaded Web Standards Update.msi package
• In Tables, select the "CustomAction" entry
• Once selected, in the right pane, select the "VSDCA_VsdLaunchConditions" line, right-click and select "Drop Row"
• Save the package and run it

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 default download is the first of the listed packages:

• Guidance, which includes scenario based practical guidance and frequently asked questions.

• Hands-on Labs (HOL), which includes the HOL documents that provide walkthroughs of the technology, based on the guidance.

• HOL Package, which includes a HOL environment setup package which allows you to setup the HOL environment in your own environment.

Get the full details and download the guidance here and keep track of all the other great ALM Rangers projects here.

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 PDF contains guidance and quick reference posters in PDF format only.
  • Complete contains guidance, quick reference posters and localization files in all available formats.
• Hands-on Labs (HOL) includes:
  • HOL documents that provide walkthroughs of the technology, based on the guidance
  • HOL Package contains a HOL environment setup package allowing you to setup the HOL environment in your own environment
  • BRDLite Build Process Reference Template walk-through.
• Samples contains sample build process templates used by the team as part of the guidance.
• Videos which showcase the guidance in quick 5-10min videos.

Get the full details and download the guidance here and keep track of all the other great ALM Rangers projects here.

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.

Architecture Tooling Guide for VS 2010 Ultimate

The Architecture Tooling Guidance for Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate has been updated to version 2.1.

What is It?

If you’re not familiar with the Architecture Tooling Guidance, here’s a quick description (as taken from the guidance):

This guidance discusses scenarios of using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, primarily focusing on the Modeling tools, to help you understand the tooling and ensure that your software system meets the expected requirements.

There is also some guidance included on building extensions using the Visual Studio 2010 Feature Builder Power Tool as well as the inclusion of a set of pre-built Visual Studio ALM Rangers Templates.

Pre-Requisites

Before installing the Architecture Tooling Guidance, you must first install the Visual Studio 2010 Feature Builder Power Tool.

Viewing the Guidance

Once the Architecture Tooling Guidance has been installed, you will get a new menu option under the Architecture menu:

Clicking on the above menu option will display the guidance outline and content in separate panes (as seen below):

To use the Visual Studio ALM Rangers Templates, start a new Visual Studio Project and select VS ALM Rangers Templates in the New Project dialog:

More Information

Follow these links for more information:

• Visual Studio 2010 Architecture Tooling Guidance (main site)
• Architecture Tooling Guide – Visual Studio Extension (install extension from here)
• Architecture Tooling Guidance Version 2.1 (ABE) is Available (blog post by Willy-Peter Schaub)
• Visual Studio 2010 Feature Builder Power Tool (pre-requisite for Architecture Tooling Guidance)