Visual Basic Blog
A group blog from members of the VB team
Latest posts
.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 "Roslyn") is the next generation of the Visual Basic and C# .NET compilers. But what does that mean? I was up in Redmond a couple weeks ago and I caught up with Dustin Campbell (Program Manager on the Managed Languages Team) and sat him down to explain Roslyn to me, a .NET dev...
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. Â Breakout Universal This is a complete game, based upon all the principles that were covered in the blog series. How Do I video series -- Lucian
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, and vice versa. Today we'll explore how to call platform--specific APIs from Common code. In particular, we'll make it so our common main page can hide the Windows Phone statusbar (with connection quality, battery, clock) - when it's running on Windows Phone, of course. Ther...
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 technical post, because playing game-like audio is a technically involved low-level task. The video lasts 3 minutes, and you should watch it first before returning to read the rest of this post, in which I’ll explain the why as well as the how. I wish audio wer...
VB Universal Windows App Part 3 (for the end-user): roaming settings, and in-app purchases
This is Part 3 of the "VB Universal Windows App" series: In the first two parts we set up a VS Solution that helped us to share between our two app projects. In this post, we're going to code in the user-facing benefits of universal Windows apps. From an end-user perspective, the benefit of universal Windows apps is that (1) if you buy the app in one store then it counts as bought in both, (2) if you buy a durable in-app purchase on one device then it counts as bought on both, (3) settings will roam between the Windows and Windows Phone versions of an app. The first part (buy the app in one sto...
VB Universal Windows App Part 2 (for the developer): sharing XAML, Assets and Code
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This is Part 2 of the "VB Universal Windows App" series: In Part 1 we set ourselves up by registering the app in the two Dev Centers, and by creating the basic structure in Solution Explorer. In Part 2 today, we're going to share! From a developer perspective, the benefit of universal Windows apps is in sharing as much as possible between the two projects you have to build. Let's step back and see what can be re-used... Sharing XAML For our simple game, we're going to re-use a single XAML page and code-behind between Windows and Windows Phone versions of the app. That's...
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 Windows App? A "universal Windows app" is a great end-user experience. It means the user of your app can buy the app on Phone, say, and it counts as purchased on Store as well. The user can make an in-app purchase on one device and it counts as purchased on the other. The user...
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 replacing some components with their "Roslyn" equivalents but this version of Visual Studio is built from the ground up on "Roslyn" with "Roslyn". The Visual Studio "14" CTP includes new and improved language and IDE features for Visual Basic such as multiline strings and a fu...
Edit and Continue survey results
Thanks everybody for all the great feedback! We've received hundreds of replies since last week with detailed information and concrete examples for us to review. We are closing the survey today and have started to process the tons of data you have provided. The overwhelming majority of you have told us that Edit and Continue is important and you'd like us to make it even better. We asked of the scenarios we'd identified where Edit and Continue is disallowed today how many of you were impacted by which restrictions and here's what you said: As you can see the most frequently reported ...