Visual Basic Blog

A group blog from members of the VB team

VB2008 - Visual Basic Blog

VB XML Cookbook, Recipe 1: XML Transformations using XML Literals (Doug Rothaus)

February 21, 2008 Feb 21, 2008 02/21/08
VBTeam
I was working on a blog entry about replacing XSLT transforms with Visual Basic XML Literals. As the entry progressed, I noticed that it was really, really long. So, Avner Aharoni and I talked things over and we decided to break it up into multiple entries and start a series, much like the LINQ Cookbook that was started a few months back. ...

Converting SQL to LINQ, Part 9: Full Outer Join (Bill Horst)

February 12, 2008 Feb 12, 2008 02/12/08
VBTeam
This post assumes you’ve read the previous posts in this series.  It makes the same assumptions as Part 8, and I will pick up where I left off, covering Full Outer Join.  Once again, I recognize this isn’t an ideal situation, so if you’d like to see better support of Full Outer Join in a future VB release, you can ...

Converting SQL to LINQ, Part 8: Left/Right Outer Join (Bill Horst)

January 31, 2008 Jan 31, 2008 01/31/08
VBTeam
This post assumes you’ve read the previous posts in this series.          After my post on joins, I’ve had some questions about outer joins.  As you can see in part 6, VB9 doesn’t have smooth support for Left or Right join.  I showed how to get similar functionality with ...

Preparing for the Next Product Cycle (Matt Gertz)

January 30, 2008 Jan 30, 2008 01/30/08
Anthony D. Green [MSFT]
I once had to learn how to juggle in a very brief time in order to get an “A” in my high school computer science class.  I am not making this up.  The idea was that juggling, being a systemic process, was somehow analogous to writing programs and… well, it sort of made sense at the time.  I’d done well ...

Source code of Visual Basic runtime has been released to public. (Vladimir)

January 19, 2008 Jan 19, 2008 01/19/08
VBTeam
  One of the things we have been working on recently was publishing sources of VisualBasic runtime library. I am very excited to announce that the sources of VB runtime (Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll) are publicly available now!  This is a part of a more general work on making .Net Framework sources available to public ( ...

Channel 9 Interview: XML Properties and Enabling IntelliSense (Beth Massi)

January 17, 2008 Jan 17, 2008 01/17/08
Beth Massi
Today I posted a Channel 9 interview with Avner Aharoni, a Program Manager on the Visual Basic Team. In this interview Avner shows us how to enable XML IntelliSense in Visual Basic using the XML to Schema Wizard. He also shows the differences between how IntelliSense works with axis properties on XDocument and XElement ...

Did you know? VB IntelliSense now filters as you type! (Lisa Feigenbaum)

January 11, 2008 Jan 11, 2008 01/11/08
Lisa Feigenbaum
Our goal in designing VB2008 IntelliSense was to make users of the feature the most productive that they could be. One problem we found in watching people use the feature, is that sometimes intelliSense displays so many items that it is hard to know whether or not you're close to the item you're looking for. You basically have to read them all...

Did you know? Ctrl+Tab to navigate windows in VS (Lisa Feigenbaum)

January 9, 2008 Jan 9, 2008 01/9/08
Lisa Feigenbaum
Just like Alt+Tab for Windows you can use Ctrl+Tab for Visual Studio. Ctrl+Tab will show you the active tool windows *and* the active files, so it is a good navigation tool for both. VS2008 has even added a cool miniature-sized visualization to this view, so that you can better determine which item you're after. Windows: (image) Visual Studio...

Did you know? IntelliSense Everywhere (Lisa Feigenbaum)

January 8, 2008 Jan 8, 2008 01/8/08
Lisa Feigenbaum
I've decided to start a "Did you know?" series with tips & tricks. First off is my favorite IDE feature in VB2008: IntelliSense Everywhere! Did you know about all the new places where you can now find intelliSense in VB2008? If you're like me, once you try 2008 IntelliSense you won't be able to go back to 2005. VB's mission statement is to...