Visual Basic Blog

A group blog from members of the VB team

.NET Compiler Platform ("Roslyn") for the Rest of Us

WOW! It’s been a while -- almost exactly 4 years since yours truly, Beth Massi, last posted on the VB Team blog (although it’s cool to see I’m still in the tag cloud ;-)).  I’m honored to be a special guest post today. If you’ve been reading this team blog I’m sure you know by now that the .NET Compiler Platform (code named...

VB Universal Windows App: downloads

Here are download links for the "VB Universal Windows App" series:   App1.vb This is the minimal VB universal app that we'll build in this blog series.   Breakout Universal This is a complete game, based upon all the principles that were covered in the blog series...

VB Universal Windows App Part 5: calling into platform-specific APIs from PCL

This is Part 5 of the "VB Universal Windows App" series: So far we've been able to re-use all our code and XAML by placing them in the PCL. Actually, PCLs can only ever contain calls to APIs that are common to the platforms they target. This generally isn't a problem, because most APIs on Windows also exist on Windows Phone, ...

VB Universal Windows App Part 4: using SharpDX for sound effects

This is Part 4 of the "VB Universal Windows App" series: So far we've built a solid app, sharing as much code and XAML as possible by placing it in our PCL. For today's post we'll continue the process, adding game-quality sound effects to our app. SharpDX is the best way to do this. Please bear with me. This is a long ...

VB Universal Windows App Part 1: Getting Started

This is Part 1 of the "VB Universal Windows App" series:   Recently in April 2014, Microsoft announced Universal Windows Apps. I thought I'd take an old Silverlight paddle game and turn it into a VB Universal Windows App. Here's how the finished game looks, on devices and in the stores:   What is a Universal ...

Visual Studio “14” CTP Now Available

As announced today by Soma, we've just released the first CTP (Community Technology Preview) of the next version of Visual Studio. This is doubly-exciting as this is the first public release of a version of Visual Studio powered by "Roslyn" by default. At BUILD we released the "Roslyn" End User Preview which extends Visual Studio 2013 by ...