Category: Software

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Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 Now Available!

VisualStudio2012Logo

Earlier the Visual Studio team in Redmond announced that as of Visual Studio 2012 their update frequency would go up and planned to release an update with bug fixes but also with new features. By doing so the development team is able to respond in a more dynamic manner to changes in direction and respond to feedback on a shorter notice.

This is how they expressed it:

“Microsoft is planning to update Visual Studio 2012 periodically to provide new and improved tools and capabilities. These improvements will be aligned with the latest software development trends so that you will always have access to the best solutions for building modern apps. The updates will also contain bug fixes and other enhancements.”

Today their first update was released to the Web and you can install it today from the download page (see “Visual Studio 2012 Update 1” under the “Additional software” section.

You can read more about it on Somasegar’s blog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2012/11/26/visual-studio-2012-update-1-now-available.aspx

or at The Visual Studio Blog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2012/11/26/visual-studio-2012-update-1-is-here.aspx

Download it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/downloads#d-visual-studio-2012-update

Have Fun!

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Build 2012

Build2012

Last year I attended Build 2011. It was highly secretive and more or less Apple-ified kind of conference held by Microsoft however this time. No one knew what to expect other than that Microsoft planned to make a big shift in their plans for the upcoming years. As I blogged about it last time, it seemed that Microsoft decided to align all products with the same type of User Interface and able to run on most devices from phones to data servers.

One of the big announcements was that Windows would be able to run on ARM processor based devices and would be prepared as touch enabled Operating System.

Tomorrow, Eight-Eight-Eight (8-8-8, August 8th at 8AM) it will happen again. Microsoft is opening their doors this time on Microsoft Campus in Redmond, not in a fancy location with Disneyland or Vegas setting but ‘just’ at Microsoft’s home base.

Again, no-one knows what to expect and what to arrange for traveling and lodging but I’m pretty sure it will provide a lot of interesting information and options to build your network for the next year or so. Build 2011 provided insights in completely new areas and was definitely worth attending. In general I am an autodidact, the reason often is that I am learning the things that I ‘predict’ to be big in the -next- couple of years and a lot of it is simply not available soon enough. Living on the bleeding edge. Events like Build are different, mainly because the speakers on the conference -are the developers- working on the new technologies. Not some consulting guys but the ones who designed it.

So, it won’t take more that 24 hours until we know what it’s all about. Or maybe not … maybe you only know how to register and where to stay. That was what happened last year. No information at all.

For me I’ll try to register and see if I can get a ticket to learn what to focus on the next couple of years. Maybe my boss is willing to sponsor me, maybe not -in that case I’ll break my piggybank and will it be my early Christmas vacation- but the ones who get in will be the ones with the Golden ticket ….

Let me know, are you trying to get registered, to get the Golden Ticket …?

To be continued …

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A world with new software and a landing

Visual Studio 2012 Logo

Last year

… has been a rollercoaster ride of new beta opportunities in a wide variety of software products. Not one product but the complete line, ecosystem if you like, was going through a huge make-over. Within Microsoft there was finally the decision to align all products and make sure each product is complementing the other.

This was something I personally favored for a long time. Instead of having all these products doing their own thing let’s have all the tools and applications in one big bowl and make sure everything looks similar and one product ads to the other. One and One is Three!

I was lucky to be able to beta test a lot of the software that is about to get released soon. This, for me is an important part of my work and just fun to do as a hobby. The software wasn’t publicly available, but I was most certainly not the only one outside Microsoft working with it. Thousands of others with me provided input and recommendations that we thought were important to implement. Obviously to say that not all of our recommendations will make it into the product but I’m sure that a large part of the feedback was adopted making the products even better.

While working on the beta software, next to our daily lives and coping with professional issues at work along with doing your stuff at home not all the things we worked on could be discussed in public was not ready to be blogged about. So that created somewhat of a gap in my blog history.

Let’s see if we can change that. A lot of exciting things is about to happen over the next few weeks and months and I’m sure that with your holiday season at the end of the year, only a few months from now, you just don’t know where to start acquiring all the new stuff and get your wannahaves.

Some history

Years ago, and I -mean- yeeeeeaaaars ago, there was this vision of one solution on multiple screens. You would be able to run the things you needed to run on all devices. Going from mobile (Windows Mobile Phones), palmtop (remember the ‘small’ iPaq devices), laptop, desktop to server machines.

Reality was however that it never was a real tight fit. Windows Mobile Phones were just clumsy and hard to handle synchronizing using a wire. Same thing with the palmtops, internally running an embedded OS lacking the wireless connection (you could go wireless but that needed a sleeve to put around the device that was even bigger than the device itself).

The laptop and the desktop integration was a bit better, it ran the same operating system but servers, (How many server types can you name, from Windows Home Server to Data Center?) was, again, another complete different story. And the cloud was not even there yet!

Improvement was needed

As you can see, if you overlook all these things, it was quite a mess. Sure the tools if you each view them in their own context often were great tools. From the start they accomplished a huge boost in productivity. Let’s be real. A lot of’em I still use every day for my personal use, professional life or just as a hobby and I love working with it.

It is however time to change. All products have been re-evaluated, been looked at, and it was decided how the product will fit in scope of all the other products. Are there duplicates? Is there something missing?

The new world of software

With all of that, a complete range of products were developed that covered all devices. Some products are new others are existing but had a complete makeover. Going from small devices (phones) to handhelds (tablets), traveller machines (ultrabook), mobile workstations (notebooks), desktops, servers and all the way to the cloud.

All devices will get the same Windows 8 style UI interface and each tailored to the way it will fit on the device. Integration will take place between your mobile devices, your desktop workspace and The Cloud. A lot of work has been put into the scenario to access all your data wherever and whenever you need.

Some of it is already in a position ready for release other parts are about to be released to manufacturer and another set of parts will be on the release schedule very soon.

If you haven’t already done so, go over to the locations I added below and start exploring some of it. Go slow, there is lots and lots of it where that came from and a lot to learn!

Curiosity

And what better way to conclude this blog item for today with the other great event that just happened. Today the Curiosity Rover  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_rover) landed on Mars to explore the things we don’t know. Exciting time to live in and looking forward to see what Curiosity discovers …

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/

The new Software

Windows 8 Release Preview

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/release-preview

Office 2013 and Office365 Customer Preview

http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en

Visual Studio 2012 Release Candidate

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us

 

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Axialis brings new set of Ribbon & Toolbar stock icons

 

If you have been reading my blog before you know I’m a big fan of Axialis’ product IconWorkShop. This tool integrates with Visual Studio and allows you to easily work with your icons in your project.

I know from my own experience that creating icons is pretty time consuming (even if you have the option of using great tools as IconWorkShop). To help you in that area Axialis now is providing you with a set of Ribbon and Toolbar stock icons so you can easily match and combine until you got the icon that you need.

If you think you are even slightly interested in buying the set I can help you a bit there as I received a small token of appreciation in the form of a discount offer for 30% off up to November the 20th <—Click!.

Let me know if you agree with me about the tools and the tools that –you- use to build the icons for your application.