Visual Studio News & Articles

So it's April 12 and it is official -- Microsoft has announced the availability of Visual Studio 2010 (news, site) and Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0. It's an exciting time for developers. But what if you are not a developer? Well, there's something there for you to be excited about too.

If you are big on agile development, then you probably know who CollabNet is. We've mentioned the ALM (application lifecycle management) solution provider before when they came out with a Visual Studio supported version of their desktop offering.

And while we don't cover a lot of agile development news, CollabNet's acquisition of Danube, a provider of Scrum project management seems worth a mention.

Of course the terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but CollabNet says it positions them very well in the agile ALM market. Together they provide scrum focused services and project management in addition to lifecycle management for software development.

“CollabNet has pioneered new methods of software development since its inception, ranging from the introduction of Subversion, aimed at helping distributed teams collaborate on their code assets, all the way to the introduction of enterprise ALM platforms, enabling all development stakeholders to collaborate in the Cloud, regardless of location. CollabNet’s acquisition of Danube is the next step in our continued leadership in changing the way that software is built,” said Bill Portelli, chief executive officer, CollabNet.

Developing applications has become more difficult with the need to get things out faster and with less bugs and issues in order to be competitive. That's why agile development has become so popular.

There are plans to integrate CollabNet's TeamForge product and Danube's ScrumWorks for Agile. If you want to know how and see the products in use, there's a webinar on March 16 that should provide you all the details.

Visual Studio 2010 (news, site) is now out as a Release Candidate and available to everyone to try out. Keep in mind it will still have issues and if you want to do Azure or MVC development, there a few things you need to do.

A lot of people are waiting for the arrival of SharePoint 2010 (news, site) so they can officially get to work developing sites and applications. But along with a new version you can install and work with locally, the arrival of SharePoint 2010 also means changes for SharePoint Online.

We like really short and sweet posts about project updates. They get to the point very quickly and leave no room for misinterpretation.

At least that is what we get from Microsoft's Rob Caron. He's the Marketing Communications Manager for Developer and User Experience Runtimes and Tools at Microsoft -- which includes of course Visual Studio. He recently presented a quick update on the new release date for Visual Studio 2010 (news, site).

Originally scheduled for late March, Microsoft withdrew the delivery date saying they needed more time for testing due to performance and virtual memory issues.

The new date? "Short but sweet, Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 will launch on Monday, 12 April 2010."

According to Mary Jo Foley, an unplanned Release Candidate will go out in February to testers, which will hopefully ensure that the issues mentioned above are resolved.

In the meantime, have another look at the new product lineup, the cloud support and a few other things in our look Visual Studio 2010: On Beta 2, New SKUs and Cloud Support.

And if you are still trying to figure out how to convince your boss that you will need the new version when it does arrive, do some comparison views of the different versions of Video Studio.

Visual Studio Comparison Tool on MSDN
 

Just what you need -- really, you probably do -- another tool to help you develop Microsoft .NET applications. Telerik (news, site) brings you JustCode, a code analysis and refactoring tool for Visual Studio.

A little Microsoft based development news to kick start your weekend. CollabNet, a provider of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solutions, has just announced the second version of CollabNet Desktop—Visual Studio Edition.

Beta 2 is now out for Visual Studio 2010 and along with it comes the announcement of a new product lineup designed to make purchasing decisions just a little bit easier.

Mid-March we saw the first official release of Microsoft's new ASP.NET MVC (news, site) framework. The alternative to Web Forms when developing ASP.NET applications has been well received and talked about frequently.

Work on ASP.NET MVC 2 started almost immediately and we saw the first preview of that version mid-August. MVC 2 Preview 1 included things like template helpers, areas and built-in support for data annotations.

But that was only the start of the work for ASP.NET MVC 2. And now a second preview has been released with even more functionality such as:

• Client Side Validation: New support for jQuery validation (here's a good example of this functionality on Pietro Brambati's blog)
• Areas: Support for areas in a single project
• Model Validation Providers: The ability to hook in model validation providers other than the default Data Annotations
• Metadata Providers: The ability to hook in other metadata providers, the default being Data Annotations
• Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2: A set of HTML code snippets for MVC 2 Preview 2

Along with new features, there were also a number of changes made to existing types and members and a few bug fixes.

The version of ASP.NET MVC 2 Preview 2 that you can download and use now works for Visual Studio 2008 SP1.

To see the Visual Studio 2010 HTML code snippets you'll have to wait for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 (MVC will be included in the beta).

Get more details on Phil Haack's blog and the official ASP.NET MVC website.

If you spend your days developing web applications and websites based on Microsoft technologies you may have an opportunity to get some free software and some free marketing. Microsoft has announced its WebsiteSpark program.

We've said it before, but let's say it again. SharePoint 2010 (news, site) looks very cool, but it is not here yet. So we need to continue to focus on improving and building our SharePoint 2007 applications.

Microsoft has come to help you out. They have released an updated version of their Developing SharePoint Applications guidance. Coming from the patterns and practices group it offers examples and information on building collaborative applications that include integration with Line of Business applications.

It's been roughly five months since ASP.NET MVC 1.0 became available and developers flocked to download it. Now, after a brief break helping out with ASP.NET 4, Phil Haack and his team have gotten back in the saddle and started working on ASP.NET MVC 2.0.

Preview 1 of ASP.NET MVC 2.0 is now available for download and the team is looking for feedback. Here's a quick look at what's new and what's still coming.

Yesterday we had a look at an overview of SharePoint 2010, focusing on the updated User Experience. But there's a lot more to the next version of SharePoint (news, site). In this sneak peek, let's look at what's new for developers and IT professionals.

When the beta for Visual Studio 2010 (news, site) first came out, it lacked the ability to create ASP.NET MVC applications. This was because Visual Studio was in lock down before MVC 1.0 was released.

There was a workaround, but it didn't give you the ability to create MVC apps, just look at them. But you likely wanted to do a heck of a lot more than just look at your code in Visual Studio 2010.

Now, says Phil Haack, you can.

With Beta 1 of Visual Studio 2010 (news, site) out for review, Microsoft is also releasing some extensions to keep us all excited about developing .NET applications. One of these extensions is the The Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio and the latest version is out as a technology preview.