The Microsoft Build Engine (MSBuild) works seamlessly within Visual Studio, but it can also be used to build software where Visual Studio is not installed. It’s possible to create custom tasks that will run during the build process, saving time and decreasing the chances of error. Hubert Kuffel demonstrates how to create two useful tasks and how to easily is it to apply these to all your .NET projects.… Read more
Visual Studio, like any Integrated Development Environment, can host extensions for more specialist languages or development tasks. This sort of work is reasonably straightforward most of the time but occasionally you need functionality that isn't available in the APIs. Michal takes two examples, printing code in an editing window, and gaining access to the Visual Studio Notifications, and explains how to hack Visual Studio to get to the functionality.… Read more
The OpenAPI ‘Swagger’ Specification defines a protocol that allows applications to discover, and generate documentation of methods, parameters and models of REST APIs, This provides a way for any software to identify the features of a REST API. It does for REST APIs what WSDL (Web Service Description Language) did for web services. Visual Studio now provides it to support proxy creation for REST APIs, as Dennes Torres explains.… Read more
Node.JS and SQL Server are a good match for creating non-blocking, event-driven database applications. Though you can use ODBC or JDBC to communicate between the two, it is possible to run such applications on platforms such as Azure, Linux, OSX and iOS by using Node together with the JavaScript TDS library called 'Tedious'. 'Tedious' is a mature product but it is still possible to get things wrong in converting SQL Server datatypes such as BigInt to native Javascript data. … Read more
Visual Studio 2015 has some greatly improved features for debugging and troubleshooting .NET applications. Probably the most significant one is in the diagnostic tools hub that allows profiling while debugging. Manuel Meyer explains all these useful new features… Read more
The latest versions of Team Foundation Server are not only sophisticated, but extensible. Continue their course of openness, Microsoft have opened up TFS, and are making it possible to build custom systems on top of it. Karsten Kempe points out three new features that make it possible to build an ALM system to exactly suit you needs, using TFS as the underlying platform, and demonstrates what's possible with an open source dashboard and work-tracking system.… Read more
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (TFS) manages workflow of software development projects. It is designed for the typical development. If it doesn't support all your team development activities, you can extend it by various means, including the creation custom controls or new work items.… Read more
Although CSS editing tools exist that give you a measure of WYSIWYG, it is often more convenient to make small adjustments using the browser's built-in inspection tool and then repeating the changes back in your source. Now, there is a way to update the source automatically, faster and more reliably… Read more
Team Foundation Service, the hosted TFS service on Azure, together with Visual Studio 11, has now provided much of the functionality that was missing from the previous incarnation of TFS. Bahadir gives a summary of the new features as seen in the test service, and demonstrates why they are so useful for team-based development… Read more
There are already third-party applications that help you to debug .NET applications remotely, or at least get enough information to diagnose the fault successfully. However, VS2010 allows you to debug remote applications. Is this the ideal way of doing it? How do you set it up? What are the pitfalls? Clive Tong explains.… Read more
SharePoint developers have long been denied their own set of tools, but that's finally starting to change. Developing for SharePoint 2010 with Visual Studio 2010 is easy and intuitive, and David takes a moment to walk us through this brave new world.… Read more
The co-evolution of Visual Basic and C# is increasingly going to bring the feature-set of those languages closer together. So, having walked us through the new language enhancements available in VB 2010, Hima Vejella now completes the picture by walking us through the new features in C#4.0.… Read more
The latest evolution of VB in Visual Studio will bring with it a bundle of C# functionality, nudging the two languages even closer together. To ensure we're ready to make the most of these enhancements, Hima Vejella takes us through each new feature.… Read more
Rick Strahl discusses why you should check out Web Application Projects and Web Deployment Projects, the much needed add-ins for Visual Studio 2005.… Read more
Phil Wilson demonstrates how to build and deploy a .NET COM assembly using best practices, and how to access it from early and late binding clients.… Read more
Debugging is an important process for any level of programming to ensure programs function as expected. Most productive developer environments provide tools and utilities to assist with the debugging process. Visual Studio.NET 2005 is equipped with a number of debugger visualizers, but users can also create their own based on an individual project.… Read more
This article describes the basics of Visual Studio setup and deployment projects. Subsequent articles will cover more on custom actions, .NET installer classes, and an upgrade for the product.… Read more
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