Visual Basic Blog
A group blog from members of the VB team
Latest posts
Walkthrough: TDD Support with the Generate From Usage Feature in VS 2010 (Lisa Feigenbaum)
As part of the October VS 2010 CTP, we also shipped a set of walkthrough documents explaining how to use the product to experience the new features. The CTP was released as a Virtual PC image, and can be a pretty hefty download to undertake. So for those of you just interested to know what's there, reading the walkthroughs can be a good alternative! Below is the combined VB/C# walkthrough for "Generate From Usage". Please tell us your feedback on this new IDE feature, either at the end of this blog post or at the following forum: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vs2010ctpvbcs/thread/d37cd027-dfa0-4bb...
VB 2008 Keyboard Shortcut Posters — Download your copy today! (Lisa Feigenbaum)
Some of you may be using the 2005 posters we released last year. There is now a 2008 version available as well! There aren't too many changes. We've actually tried to stay pretty consistent with the VB keybindings (going back to at least VB6), since we know there's nothing more frustrating than upgrading and finding the keystroke that used to take you to the watch window now deletes the current line. :) However, we have added a few new keyboard shortcuts for 2008 features, so you might want to download the 2008 copy to have the latest. Happy shortcutting! http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyi...
Using both VB.Net and C#? (Lisa Feigenbaum)
It's common today to switch back and forth between VB.Net and C# for different projects, jobs, teams, etc. VB MVP Kathleen Dollard and C# MVP Bill Wagner have gathered some tips to keep in mind when you make these transitions. They both write for Visual Studio Magazine, which is where these articles were released last week as part of the December edition.What C# Devs Should Know About VB by Kathleen DollardWhat VB Devs Should Know About C# by Bill WagnerEditor in Chief, Patrick Meader, also wrote an Editor's Note for this issue On the Benefits of Learning Multiple Languages. He explains that "Developers of VB and...
M. G. Phone Home (Matt Gertz)
M. G. Phone Home (Matt Gertz)I have a slight problem with my cell phone. It’s a smartphone; I love it, I use it all the time, and I don’t what I’d do without it, but I’ve been pretty aggravated with its support of Bluetooth. It will fail to pair with the Sync system in the car at random times, which drives me crazy as I’ll only notice the problem when I’m on the highway or something. Here in Washington State, it is (thankfully) illegal to drive and operate a hands-on cell phone at the same time, and so one of the whole points of getting a car with Sync was to ...
Did you know? You can unwind the call stack from exceptions (Bill Horst)
The ability to unwind the call stack from exceptions is one of the debugger features that was newly introduced in Visual Basic.NET 2005. When the debugger hits a first-chance exception, you can unwind the call stack in order to make code edits to fix the exception and continue debugging with the changes. The exception assistant UI will have an “Enable Editing” option which will unwind the debugger to the topmost call stack frame with code in the current solution.When an exception is unhandled, the unwind will occur automatically, but this can be turned on and off from the Options dialog (under Tools)....
Happy 10th Birthday to the Italian VB Tips and Tricks Community! (Lisa Feigenbaum)
"Visual Basic Tips & Tricks" is an Italian online community that was started 10 years ago today. To be exact, the first tips were actually published in 1996 on a personal web page of the founder and leader, Gianluca Cannalire. However, the group recognizes the first day of the "real community" as December 8th 1998, when a web portal was created with articles, forums, mailing lists, downloads, and tips. "Visual Basic Tips & Tricks" currently hosts 36,300 subscribers, and is the second largest Italian development community! Visit it here: http://community.visual-basic.it/ The Microsoft Visual Basic team wou...
Did you know? There are many ways to insert a snippet into your code (Lisa Feigenbaum)
Code snippets were introduced in the Visual Basic 2005 release. They provide an easy way to learn how to do a particular coding task, or to re-use a piece of code in various parts of your application. Code snippets can be inserted in a variety of ways. The method you choose will depend upon the situation. When browsing for a code snippet, use the Code Snippet Inserter: Code Snippet InserterThe Code Snippet Inserter can be invoked in the following two ways: by typing ‘?+Tab’ in your code file, or by right-clicking and selecting "Insert Snippet..." from the context menu that appears. Y...
Video: Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Tips and Tricks (Lisa Feigenbaum)
I've blogged the session materials for this presentation before, but now we finally have the video available too! Here are some section markers: Enjoy! http://www.microsoft.com/emea/teched2008/developer/tv/default.aspx?vid=79
Video: The Joy of Writing Code in Visual Studio 2010 (Karen Liu)
We've had a couple recent posts about the Code Focused development experience coming up in the Visual Studio 2010 IDE: Code Focus Announcements in the TechEd EMEA Keynote Code Focus Videos on Channel 9 Now for the ultimate coverage (a complete TechEd presentation on the subject), check out the following video by Karen Liu! http://www.microsoft.com/emea/teched2008/developer/tv/default.aspx?vid=80