January 2008 | Visual Basic Blog

Converting SQL to LINQ, Part 8: Left/Right Outer Join (Bill Horst)

VBTeamJanuary 31, 2008Jan 31, 200801/31/08

This post assumes you’ve read the previous posts in this series. After my post on joins, I’ve had some questions about outer joins. As you can see in part 6, VB9 doesn’t have smooth support for Left or Right join. I showed how to get similar functionality with

Preparing for the Next Product Cycle (Matt Gertz)

Anthony D. Green [MSFT]January 30, 2008Jan 30, 200801/30/08

I once had to learn how to juggle in a very brief time in order to get an “A” in my high school computer science class. I am not making this up. The idea was that juggling, being a systemic process, was somehow analogous to writing programs and… well, it sort of made sense at the time. I’d done well t

Petzold WPF Book Sample Conversion – Final Chapters (Young Joo)

VBTeamJanuary 29, 2008Jan 29, 200801/29/08

I've just posted a final set of chapters (Chapters 25 - 31). This completes our conversion efforts and you now have access to entire sample code from Petzold's book in VB. I would like to thank Evan and Ged who have been working with me on this. You guys rock!!!A few things to note: Hope you enjoy this!Thanks!Young Joo

Announcing the Forums Bug Submission Pilot (Sarika Calla)

VBTeamJanuary 22, 2008Jan 22, 200801/22/08

In addition to Connect, you can now report Visual Basic bugs directly in the Visual Basic Forums. The forum posts get entered as a bug or product suggestion into VB’s internal bug tracking system. With this we hope to take Forums (our vibrant online channel for feedback) a step further by making it easier to submit bugs and product

Source code of Visual Basic runtime has been released to public. (Vladimir)

VBTeamJanuary 19, 2008Jan 19, 200801/19/08

One of the things we have been working on recently was publishing sources of VisualBasic runtime library. I am very excited to announce that the sources of VB runtime (Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll) are publicly available now! This is a part of a more general work on making .Net Framework sources available to public (

Channel 9 Interview: XML Properties and Enabling IntelliSense (Beth Massi)

Beth Massi - MicrosoftJanuary 17, 2008Jan 17, 200801/17/08

Today I posted a Channel 9 interview with Avner Aharoni, a Program Manager on the Visual Basic Team. In this interview Avner shows us how to enable XML IntelliSense in Visual Basic using the XML to Schema Wizard. He also shows the differences between how IntelliSense works with axis properties on XDocument and XElement obje

Did you know? VB IntelliSense now filters as you type! (Lisa Feigenbaum)

Lisa FeigenbaumJanuary 11, 2008Jan 11, 200801/11/08

Our goal in designing VB2008 IntelliSense was to make users of the feature the most productive that they could be. One problem we found in watching people use the feature, is that sometimes intelliSense displays so many items that it is hard to know whether or not you're close to the item you're looking for. You basically have to read them all

Did you know? What you can do with Debugger Datatips… (Lisa Feigenbaum)

Lisa FeigenbaumJanuary 10, 2008Jan 10, 200801/10/08

There's a lot of cool functionality built into VS debugger datatips that often goes unnoticed... For example, did you know that not only can you *see* values in the expanded datatips, but you can also edit them? Watch the following walk-through... While debugging, hover over a variable to view its debugger datatip: Next press the '+' to expan

Did you know? Ctrl+Tab to navigate windows in VS (Lisa Feigenbaum)

Lisa FeigenbaumJanuary 9, 2008Jan 9, 200801/9/08

Just like Alt+Tab for Windows you can use Ctrl+Tab for Visual Studio. Ctrl+Tab will show you the active tool windows *and* the active files, so it is a good navigation tool for both. VS2008 has even added a cool miniature-sized visualization to this view, so that you can better determine which item you're after. Windows: Visual Studio:

Did you know? IntelliSense is now transparent in VS2008! (Lisa Feigenbaum)