Visual Basic Blog

A group blog from members of the VB team

January 2008 - Visual Basic Blog

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

January 31, 2008 Jan 31, 2008 01/31/08
VBTeam
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)

January 30, 2008 Jan 30, 2008 01/30/08
Anthony D. Green [MSFT]
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 ...

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

January 29, 2008 Jan 29, 2008 01/29/08
VBTeam
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)

January 22, 2008 Jan 22, 2008 01/22/08
VBTeam
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)

January 19, 2008 Jan 19, 2008 01/19/08
VBTeam
  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)

January 17, 2008 Jan 17, 2008 01/17/08
Beth Massi
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 ...

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

January 11, 2008 Jan 11, 2008 01/11/08
Lisa Feigenbaum
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)

January 10, 2008 Jan 10, 2008 01/10/08
Lisa Feigenbaum
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: (image) Next press the '+' ...

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

January 9, 2008 Jan 9, 2008 01/9/08
Lisa Feigenbaum
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: (image) Visual Studio...