Visual Studio 2013 update 1: avoid the RC if you use C++
Microsoft has released Visual Studio 2013 Update 1 RC which I installed for a look. It has a “go-live” license, which means you can use it in production, and when the final version comes out you will...
View ArticleFrank comments from Microsoft Product Manager on the Visual Studio 2012 user...
When Visual Studio 2012 was first previewed, it presented a new IDE style which featured all-caps menus and a mainly monochrome icon set which most developers disliked; the icons were too hard to...
View ArticleVisual Studio license expired: not what you want to see just before boarding...
While waiting to board I fired up Visual Studio 2013 thinking I might tinker with the game I am working on during the flight. I got this unwelcome message. “Your license has gone stale.” This is...
View ArticleHow to crash your Windows Store XAML app
I am working on a Windows Store app, of which more soon. I am writing the app in XAML and C#. I was tweaking the page design when I hit a problem. Everything was fine in the designer in Visual Studio,...
View ArticleMicrosoft’s new open source direction for C# and .NET (and native compilation...
At the April 2014 Build conference Microsoft made some far-reaching announcements about its .NET platform and the C# programming language. Yes, there was talk of C# 6.0, the next version, but the real...
View ArticleOffice, Azure Active Directory, and mobile: the three pillars of Microsoft’s...
When Microsoft first announced Azure, at its PDC Conference in October 2008, I was not impressed. Here is the press release, if you fancy a look back. It was not so much the technology – though with...
View ArticleHands on with Cordova in Visual Studio
At TechEd this week, Microsoft announced Apache Cordova support in Visual Studio 2013. A Cordova app is HTML and JavaScript wrapped as a native app, with support for multiple platforms including iOS...
View ArticleHands on with Xamarin 3.0: a cross-platform breakthrough for Visual Studio
Today Xamarin announced version 3.0 of its cross-platform mobile development tools, which let you target Android and iOS with C# and .NET. I have been trying a late beta preview. In order to use...
View ArticleVisual Studio “14” announced, preview available with “Roslyn” open source...
Microsoft’s Soma Somasegar has announced the next version of Visual Studio, currently known as Visual Studio 14, but likely to be fully released in 2015 (and, I am guessing, likely to be called Visual...
View ArticleDeveloping an app on Microsoft Azure: a few quick reflections
I have recently completed (if applications are ever completed) an application which runs on Microsoft’s Azure platform. I used lots of Microsoft technology: Visual Studio 2013 Visual Studio Online with...
View ArticleBing Developer Assistant adds code samples to Visual Studio IntelliSense,...
Microsoft has updated its Bing Developer Assistant Beta, a Visual Studio 2013 add-in which hooks into IntelliSense so that you get code samples as well as brief documentation. For example, in an Entity...
View ArticleBook review: Professional ASP.NET MVC 5. Is this the way to learn ASP.NET MVC?
This book caught my eye because while I like ASP.NET MVC, Microsoft’s modern web application framework, it seems to be badly documented. Even the word “badly” is not quite right; there is lots of...
View ArticleVLC is coming to Windows Phone
The popular media playback app VLC is coming to Windows Phone as well as Windows tablets, according to an email sent to supporters of its Kickstarter project for VLC for WinRT (Windows Runtime). A new...
View ArticleCompile Android Java, iOS Objective C apps for Windows 10 with Visual Studio:...
Microsoft has announced the ability to compile Windows 10 apps written in Java or C++ for Android, or in Objective C for iOS, at its Build developer conference here in San Francisco. Objective C code...
View ArticleMicrosoft completes Visual Studio 2015
Microsoft has completed Visual Studio 2015, the latest version of its all-encompassing development tool. You can download it here. Today is also the release day for TypeScript 1.5 (a language which...
View ArticleAdapting a native code DLL to be called from a Store or Universal Windows app
I am writing a Bridge game in C# – yes, I have been doing this for some time, it does run now but it is not ready for public unveiling. It is good fun though and a learning experience, as I am writing...
View ArticleHow to run Android Studio on Windows without disabling Hyper-V
If you run Windows and use the Hyper-V hypervisor, which is used by Visual Studio as well as being handy for testing stuff in virtual machines, then you will encounter an annoyance if you go on to...
View ArticleMicrosoft needs to fix its Android emulator
Microsoft wants Windows 10 to be an ideal developer operating system, with its Linux subsystem, and Visual Studio 2017 is notable for its strong cross-platform development tools. There is an annoyance...
View ArticleMicrosoft announces Visual Studio 2019, but pleasing developers is a tough...
Microsoft’s John Montgomery has announced Visual Studio 2019, in a post which is short on any details of what might be in the product, other than to continue evolving features that we already know...
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Hands On ASP.NET Core
I’ve been putting together a quick web application (well, I thought it would be quick) in my spare time (hah!) and I picked ASP.NET Core on Linux as a sensible option given that I like working in C#....
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