Visual Basic Blog

A group blog from members of the VB team

Lucian Wischik - Visual Basic Blog

New Language Features in Visual Basic 14

December 9, 2014 Dec 9, 2014 12/9/14
Anthony D. Green [MSFT]
"Visual Basic 14" is the version of Visual Basic that will ship with Visual Studio 2015. In this blog post I'll talk specifically about the VB language improvements in this release. (Separately, there are a whole host of IDE and project-system improvements as well). There are two overall themes to the language improvements: (1) Make common ...

New Language Features in Visual Basic 14 (animated)

November 26, 2014 Nov 26, 2014 11/26/14
Anthony D. Green [MSFT]
"Visual Basic 14" is the version of Visual Basic that will ship with Visual Studio 2015. In this blog post I'll talk specifically about the VB language improvements in this release. (Separately, there are a whole host of IDE and project-system improvements as well). There are two overall themes to the language improvements: (1) Make common ...

VB Universal Windows App: downloads

June 21, 2014 Jun 21, 2014 06/21/14
VBTeam
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.   How Do I video series   &...

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

June 20, 2014 Jun 20, 2014 06/20/14
VBTeam
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 ...

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

June 15, 2014 Jun 15, 2014 06/15/14
VBTeam
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

June 15, 2014 Jun 15, 2014 06/15/14
Anthony D. Green [MSFT]
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 "...

Visual Basic 11 Beta Available for Download!

February 28, 2012 Feb 28, 2012 02/28/12
VBTeam
As you may have read in Jason’s announcement, today we announced that Visual Studio 11 Beta is now available for download.  This is a huge release for Visual Basic as it provides full platform support for building Windows 8 Metro style apps, a first-class asynchronous programming experience, and also the long-awaited Iterators ...

Announcement: Namespace Global

September 27, 2011 Sep 27, 2011 09/27/11
VBTeam
There’s a new feature coming to VB, and already included in the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview. The feature is called Namespace Global and it’ll make your life easier… The MSDN reference on namespaces (including Namespace Global) is here: Namespaces in Visual Basic. As an aside, I’d like to thank Shimmy ...