microsoft development tools

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Employ refactoring via Visual Studio to write better code

Refactoring is the practice of making your code cleaner and clearer without affecting the functionality. Find out what's included in Visual Studio's Refactor menu, and discover a couple of Visual Studio add-ins that bring refactoring to the Visual Basic community. by Tony Patton

Tags: Developer, Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Visual Basic, Code, Feature, Refactoring, Refactor, Refactor Menu, Visual Studio IDE, Microsoft Development Tools, Programming Languages, Development Tools, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Tony Patton

Blog posts 2008-08-04

A .NET primer on reference types and value types

Working with reference types and value types is usually not given much thought during daily programming chores; but if you ever choose to pursue .NET certification, you should be familiar with both types. Tony Patton provides you with a solid background in these programming basics. by Tony Patton

Tags: Method, Reference, Class, Type, Object, Class Type, ByRef, Person, Person Class, SwapPeople, SwapValue, person1.FirstName, person1.LastName, person1.Title, person2.FirstName, person2.LastName, person2.Title, Console.WriteLine, Integer, ByVal, .Net, C#, Application Servers, Microsoft Development Tools, Development Tools, Programming Languages, Middleware, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Enterprise Software, Software, Tony Patton

Blog posts 2008-06-16

My move from VB.NET to C#

Justin James confesses why he stuck with VB.NET for so long rather than moving to C# and reveals how life has been now that he's taken the plunge. by Justin James

Tags: Microsoft Visual Basic.Net, .NET Documentation, C#, .Net, Programming Languages, Microsoft Development Tools, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Development Tools, Justin James

Blog posts 2008-06-11

Keeping up with development technology at TechEd 2008

Bill Gates kicked off last week's TechEd North America 2008 Developers conference in Orlando, FL by talking about the fact that he's taking a less active role at Microsoft to spend more time as a philanthropist. Even though this was old news, I learned plenty of new information during the...

Tags: Developer, Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Silverlight, Product, Microsoft Corp., Conference, Silverlight 2 Beta 2, Microsoft Sync Framework, Microsoft Development Tools, Enterprise Software, Development Tools, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Software, Tony Patton

Blog posts 2008-06-09

Visual Studio 2008 simplifies JavaScript debugging

One of the more cumbersome development tasks is debugging client-side JavaScript code. Tools such as Firebug are helpful, but in the case of Firebug, you're forced to use Firefox. Thankfully, Visual Studio 2008 provides a robust and developer-friendly environment for debugging JavaScript. Simplification Whenever I hear developers discuss...

Tags: Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, JavaScript, Debugger, Breakpoint, Breakpoints, Figure B, Microsoft Development Tools, Scripting Languages, Development Tools, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Web Development, Tony Patton

Blog posts 2008-05-15

Create custom Visual Studio 2005 code snippets

Visual Studio 2005's built-in code snippets are great, but you can extend the concept by creating custom code snippets to easily reuse common code blocks in your application. This tutorial walks you through the process of creating custom code snippets. Creating the file Code snippets are defined in...

Tags: Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, Snippet, CodeSnippets Element, Code Element, Microsoft Development Tools, XML, Development Tools, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Web Development, Tony Patton

Blog posts 2008-04-18

Take advantage of code snippets in Visual Studio 2005

The auto-complete features of Visual Studio .NET are wonderful if you are a Visual Basic developer, but C# developers sorely missed out on the feature. (Of course, C# developers who never use Visual Basic may be unaware of its existence.) Fortunately, Visual Studio 2005 brings auto-complete for code snippets to...

Tags: Folder, Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, Microsoft Visual Basic, Snippet, CodeSnippets Element, Declarations Element, Code Element, Microsoft Development Tools, C#, Programming Languages, Development Tools, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Tony Patton

Blog posts 2008-04-15

Don't sweat migrating legacy .NET projects to Visual Studio 2008

I'm always a bit apprehensive when moving to a new development tool or a new version of an existing tool because of the possibility of breaking existing code and projects. Little did I know that migrating to Visual Studio 2008 would be such a breeze. Visual Studio...

Tags: Project, Microsoft Visual Studio, Solution, Microsoft .NET, Version, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, Conversion, Solution File, Wizard, Microsoft Development Tools, Development Tools, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Tony Patton

Blog posts 2008-04-07

How do I... Use threading to increase performance in C#? (Part 2)

One of the main disadvantages of the ThreadPool is that you send a method to it and you never know when the method has completed. You also will not know whether or not that method threw an exception. As you can imagine, not knowing that an exception has been thrown...

Tags: Method, Performance, Exception, ThreadPool, ThreadManager, MethodContainer, WaitCallback, ExecuteMethod, Microsoft Development Tools, C#, Performance Management, Development Tools, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Programming Languages, Human Resources, Workforce Management, Zach Smith

Blog posts 2008-03-03

Visual Studio 2008 released to non-MSDN subscribers

Microsoft has made the latest version of Visual Studio available to non-MSDN subscribers as of January, ahead of the official corporate launch next month. Excerpt from ZDNet: Microsoft released to manufacturing Visual Studio 2008 on November 19, 2007, and made it available at that time to...

Tags: Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Development Tools, Development Tools, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Paul Mah

Blog posts 2008-01-29

Visual Studio 2008 offers developers more testing options

Unit testing has evolved from a fringe activity to an industry-accepted way to develop software. This change in attitude was aided by the introduction of numerous freely available testing frameworks -- most notably, NUnit. Microsoft's testing options have drawn the ire of the development community for years...

Tags: Developer, Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, Goal, Microsoft Corp., Framework, Tool, NUnit, xUnit.net, TestDriven.NET, Microsoft Development Tools, .Net, Development Tools, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Tony Patton

Blog posts 2008-01-29

Initial impressions of Visual Studio 2008

Visual Studio 2008 was recently released to MSDN subscribers, and it's slated to be available to the general public soon. These recent developments spurred me to take a closer look at the latest version of Microsoft's flagship IDE. In this overview of Visual Studio 2008, I'll start...

Tags: Microsoft Visual Studio, IDE, Microsoft .NET, Version, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, LINQ, Feature, Microsoft Development Tools, Development Tools, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Tony Patton

Blog posts 2007-12-17

Microsoft attempts to streamline .NET development with Volta

In the ads for Visual Studio and for .NET, Microsoft promised to revolutionize and streamline daily development tasks. While .NET is a vast improvement over past Microsoft development platforms, it still requires a certain level of expertise. Microsoft continues its push to simplify Web development with Volta. Is it...

Tags: Microsoft Visual Studio, Application, Microsoft .NET, Microsoft Intermediate Language, Goal, Microsoft Corp., Tier, Volta, Volta Remodulation, Microsoft Development Tools, Development Tools, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Tony Patton

Blog posts 2007-12-11

Read about Microsoft's development offerings for 2008

I spend much of my time knee deep in Microsoft technologies, and I often find it difficult to keep up with the new products and versions. Fortunately, I usually have some time to get up to speed because most organizations are slow to adopt new technologies and upgrade to new...

Tags: Developer, Microsoft Visual Studio, IDE, Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation, Microsoft Corp., Feature, Tool, .NET Framework 3.5, LINQ, SQL Server 2008, Microsoft Development Tools, .Net, Databases, Development Tools, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Enterprise Software, Software, Data Management, Tony Patton

Blog posts 2007-11-27

Microsoft set to ship Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5

Microsoft is set to ship the next version of its Visual Studio IDE Integrated Developer Environment and .NET Framework. Visual Studio 2008 comes packed with more than 250 new features while .NET adds SOA, Web 2.0 and SaaS. Features in Visual Studio 2008 include: ...

Tags: Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, Microsoft Corp., LINQ, Microsoft Development Tools, .Net, Middleware, Development Tools, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Enterprise Software, Software, Arun Radhakrishnan

Blog posts 2007-11-21

Save time with Visual Studio 2005 project templates

While application development provides plenty of opportunities to be creative, there are numerous aspects of every project that require developers to perform the same tasks over and over again. Automating such tasks provides you with more time to concentrate on the more challenging aspects of your work. Visual Studio 2005...

Tags: Project, Directory, Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, Template, Default Directory, Starter Kit Concept, New Project Dialog Box, Microsoft Development Tools, Development Tools, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Tony Patton

Blog posts 2007-11-21

Explore an overloading method in VB.NET

Developers often need to define a method with the same name that may perform different functionalities. In order to do that, you should use the Overloads keyword in .NET. In this quick tip, I look at an example function that performs different sets of functionalities with the same name. ...

Tags: Procedure, Microsoft Visual Basic.Net, .Net, Microsoft Development Tools, Programming Languages, Middleware, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Development Tools, Enterprise Software, Software, Irina Medvinskaya

Blog posts 2007-11-08

Visual Studio 2008 shipping by end of November

Microsoft will be releasing Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 by the end of this month. The announcement was made at Microsoft's TechEd Developers 2007 conference on Monday. According to Soma Somasegar, corporate vice president of Microsoft's developer division, "Visual Studio 2008 and...

Tags: Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft Corp., Sync Framework, Microsoft Development Tools, Development Tools, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Paul Mah

Blog posts 2007-11-07

Remember a form's position between uses in VB.NET

There are times when it's handy for developers to be able to remember where a form was located the last time the application was used. In this quick VB.NET tip, I'll show you a way of using Application Settings to store and use the last location of the form. ...

Tags: Form, Microsoft Visual Basic.Net, Microsoft Development Tools, Programming Languages, .Net, Development Tools, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Irina Medvinskaya

Blog posts 2007-11-01

Create shortcut menus for forms in VB.NET using ContextMenuStrip

In order to implement shortcut menus for a form, you can add the VB.NET ContextMenuStrip control to your form. In the design mode, the control will appear on the bottom of the form. When you click the control, you can add menu items to it. There are...

Tags: Form, Microsoft Visual Basic.Net, Menu Item, Microsoft Development Tools, Programming Languages, .Net, Development Tools, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Irina Medvinskaya

Blog posts 2007-10-25