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Nov 17, 2015
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SAP Fiori Mobile Apps and Tools for Apache Cordova

Visual Studio Team

Cordova makes it easy to build an app for iOS, Android, and Windows using web technologies. Although Blank project templates in Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova provide all the raw materials to build your basic “Hello World”, you have also told us that you would like to see richer starting points. We have covered starting points for frameworks like Ionic and Monaca in the past, but today we are going to take a look at how a major business platform company is working towards this goal with Cordova and Visual Studio: SAP. SAP, SAP Fiori, and the SAP Mobile SDK As the market leader in enterprise ...

Nov 5, 2015
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Talk with our Apache Cordova Tooling team, live!

Visual Studio Team

In the Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova team, we’re always looking for ways to connect with developers using our tools to create mobile apps. Starting next week, we’re taking a cue from the ASP.NET team and trying a new format – live, weekly, community question and answer sessions via our http://taco.visualstudio.com/live site. We’ll be taking questions from attendees as well as responding to issues posted to Stack Overflow. To learn about our schedule and how to attend, visit the Cordova Tools Live Q&A website. We’re going to host these events for the next two months; base...

Nov 4, 2015
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Developer update for Microsoft Band

Visual Studio Team

It’s been a year since we launched Microsoft Band and Microsoft Health. We’ve made a commitment to the developer community to make our ecosystem open and accessible on every platform. Since then, we delivered three developer tools around our devices and services: Microsoft Band SDK, Microsoft Band Web Tiles, and Microsoft Health Cloud APIs. And as our devices and services evolve, we’re making continuous improvements to these tools. With the recent announcement of the new Microsoft Band 2, we released updates to the Band SDK to add support for the new device. We’ve also released the officia...

Nov 2, 2015
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Apache Cordova Face-to-Face Meeting, Fall 2015

Visual Studio Team

Microsoft hosted an in-person meeting in mid-October for Apache Cordova committers and developers. The goal was to two-fold: (1) advance conversations around Apache Cordova's future road map and (2) review the project health and, where necessary, create an action plan to address any quality issues identified by developers. The themes of the meeting included our commitment to making Apache Cordova and its plugins a stable platform. This meeting was similar to the hour-long virtual conversations that Cordova committers usually have every month, but with more time dedicated to cover all the topics. In attendance wer...

Oct 29, 2015
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Visual Studio Update 1 RC

Visual Studio Team

Today we released Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 RC, which builds on the Update 1 CTP we released three weeks ago. In addition to the features introduced in the CTP as described here, the Release Candidate includes the following:   For a complete list of features in Update 1 RC and information on bug fixes and known issues, see the Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 RC Release Notes. Important note: the Visual Studio Emulator for Emulator and Microsoft Test Manager will not be able to acquire online licenses when used with Visual Studio Update 1 RC installed. Therefore, we recomm...

Oct 28, 2015
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Writing and Using Custom Code in U-SQL – User-Defined Functions

Visual Studio Team

In my last blog post, I introduced U-SQL as the new Big Data query language for the Azure Data Lake that unifies the benefits of SQL with the expressive power of your own code. Today we are announcing the availability of the Azure Data Lake in public preview. You can now try U-SQL in Visual Studio and run it over massive amounts of data in the store and across relational store such as Azure SQL Database. In this blog post, I will dive a bit deeper into how you can extend U-SQL queries with custom code. One of the major values of U-SQL is how easy it is to add user-specific code written in C#. Because U-SQL&rsquo...

Oct 27, 2015
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Top News for September 2015

Visual Studio Team

Hello everyone! Every month we share some top stories from the previous month, and here’s our round-up for September. Open-source, cross-platform MSBuild: Continuing the open-source, cross-platform .NET story that is already well underway with .NET Core and the .NET Compiler Platform (“Roslyn”), MSBuild is joining the fun as explained by Nikolai Tillmann. The sources are now on GitHub, and open to contributions as MSBuild makes its way to .NET Core.   Cross-platform apps: Choices like Apache Cordova, Xamarin, and Unity all have great support in Visual Studio. In Building your first end...

Oct 22, 2015
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Apache Cordova Customer Spotlight: WeatherPerfect

Visual Studio Team

In this blog we typically share updates and improvements to Visual Studio itself. We also want to highlight examples of how developers use these tools to build compelling mobile apps. Meet Sverre Nøkleby, a developer from Norway who’s been building the very cool WeatherPerfect app using Apache Cordova. I interviewed him recently over Skype and email. Among other things, we discussed how he built the app and his recommendations to developers that have a great new app idea they want to bring to reality. Meet Sverre and WeatherPerfect Tell me a little about your app. What prompted you to build it? A...

Oct 19, 2015
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Microsoft Connect (); // 2015 Developer Event Set for November 18-19

Visual Studio Team

Microsoft is a developer company, so there’s nothing we love more than connecting with developers to share our latest tools, technologies and plans for the future. I therefore invite you to set your calendar for November 18-19 for Connect (); // 2015 – when Microsoft hosts its premier fall developer event, streamed live and for free, from New York City to developers around the world. Keynotes and technical sessions will feature news, demos and insights that illustrate how developers are working with Microsoft to capitalize on their evolving roles with powerful and flexible tools that embrace today&...