Visual Basic Blog
A group blog from members of the VB team
Latest posts
Channel 9 Interview: No More Underscores in Visual Basic 10 (Beth Massi, Tyler Whitney)
I just posted a new Channel 9 interview. This time it's with Tyler Whitney, a developer on the Visual Basic compiler team. Here he demonstrates how line termination has changed in the Visual Basic 10 compiler making underscores unnecessary as line continuation indicators. This makes your code more readable especially when writing multi-line LINQ queries. Yes it's true, many underscores are unemployed so the team has created a support group for them at www.unemployedunderscores.com :-)Enjoy, -Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community
The Silverlight Toolkit Adds Visual Basic Samples (Lisa Feigenbaum)
The Silverlight Toolkit March 2009 release is enhanced with Visual Basic source code. Please follow the links to view these samples for both Silverlight 2 and Silverlight 3. Silverlight 2: http://silverlight.net/samples/sl2/toolkitcontrolsamples/run/default.html Silverlight 3: http://silverlight.net/samples/sl3/toolkitcontrolsamples/run/default.html The Silverlight Toolkit is a collection of controls, components and utilities made available outside the normal Silverlight release cycle. It includes full source code, unit tests, samples and documentation for 18 new controls covering charting, styling, layout, and ...
Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight: VB QuickStarts, Hands-On-Labs, and How-To Topics released! (Lisa Feigenbaum)
Today the Microsoft Patterns & Practices team released a download aimed to help Visual Basic developers use the Composite Application Library. It includes VB versions of the QuickStarts, Hands-On-Labs, and How-To topics: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=537da1cd-43e1-4799-88e7-a1da9166fb46 I've included some more information about the Composite Application Guidance below . You can also find more resources on MSDN and on CodePlex. Please post feedback on the current VB release to Blaine's blog. (Blaine is a Program Manager on the Microsoft Patterns & Practices te...
Channel 9 Interview: WPF Improvements in VS2010 for Business Apps (Beth Massi, Milind Lele)
Today I posted a new interview on Channel 9 on WPF Improvements in Visual Studio 2010 for Building Business Apps.At the MVP Summit a few weeks ago, Italian MVP Alessandro del Sole was so excited about the new WPF features in Visual Studio 2010 that he asked me if he could interview Milind Lele himself to get the low-down -- I said sure! Milind is a Program Manager on the Visual Studio Pro Tools team. In this interview he chats with Alessandro about the new WPF improvements in Visual Studio 2010 for building business applications. This time Milind shows off the new Visual Studio UI and the new WPF data grid as he ...
Channel 9 Interview: Using the Touchless SDK with Visual Basic (Beth Massi, Lucian Wischik)
Today I posted a new interview on Channel 9 on using the Touchless SDK. The Touchless SDK enables developers to create multi-touch based applications using a webcam for input. "Touch without touching." It's actually pretty cool! In this interview I meet up with Touchless SDK creator, Mike Wasserman and Visual Basic Spec Lead, Lucian Wischik. They explain the project and show off a game they developed using Visual Basic 9 in Visual Studio 2008. I almost got my block knocked off playing the game but you'll see how it was worth it ;-)For additional information mentioned in the video check out: ...
MIX 09 Video: Making XML Really, Really Easy with Microsoft Visual Basic (Alex Turner, Lisa Feigenbaum)
Alex Turner presented VB XML yesterday here at MIX 09. Check out the video from his session! Video link: https://channel9.msdn.com/events/mix(The powerpoint slides are attached.) Making XML Really, Really Easy with Microsoft Visual Basic 9 MIX09-T72M Wednesday March 18 |11:55 AM-12:15 PM | San Polo 3401 By: Alex Turner Tags: Languages See how Visual Basic 9 makes generating rich XML orders of magnitude easier than using text concatenation or an object model. Come learn how XML literals, embedded expressions, LINQ integration, automatic schema generation, and other XML-specific Visual Basic 9.0 features will tr...
Visual Studio at MIX 09 (Lisa Feigenbaum)
MIX 09 is here! ScottGu kicks off the keynote today at 9am PST. Below is the list of Visual Studio related sessions. The full conference list is posted here. Didn't buy a pass? Don't worry. Tune in to https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/locations/events to watch sessions live, or to view them on-demand within 24hrs of recording. In addition to watching the sessions, here are some other ways to stay connected this week: Keynotes and Visual Studio related sessions: Day One Keynote MIX09-KEY01 Wednesday March 18 |9:00 AM-11:00 AM | By: Bill Buxton, Scott Guthrie Day 1 keynote f...
Presentation Materials from Belgian TechDays 2009 (Lisa Feigenbaum)
Last week, I gave two talks at the Belgian TechDays in Antwerp. This was my first time at the conference, and it was a great event! I've created a resource page on Code Gallery for the presentation materials from my talks: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/techdays I've included the direct links below as well. Future Directions for Visual Basic (Slide Deck, Demo Code) In this session, we'll discuss the future direction of Visual Basic both in the near and long term. Come see the exciting new language features in VB 2010, including additional LINQ functionality, syntax simplifications and dynamic lang...
Tips and Tricks for Finding Information in the MSDN Library (Mary Lee)
When you have a question about how an API works, most of you will look in the MSDN Library. There are some tips and tricks to finding what you need in this vast resource. First of all, there are two main ways you can read the content in the MSDN Library. You can also use the MTPS Web service at http://services.msdn.microsoft.com/ContentServices/ContentService.asmx to access MSDN and TechNet content. For two examples on how to use this Web service, see How to: Bind to a Web Service and Walkthrough: Binding to Data from a Service in an Application-Level Project. The offline and online ...