Build Windows Discussion

[HawkMan]

A lot of this is really awesome.  New management is doing wonders for the company.

 

This is still old management. he JUST started, you can't credit him for this. 

[George P Global Moderator]

What I think MS will do is release PC games on the Windows Store first, I don't see why or some technical reason you can't sell desktop win32 apps/games through the store if you want to and with the store being front and center on the desktop now with the update and the changes with the 2nd update they could do that.   That means like with Halo Spartan Ops, it'll hit the windows store first (and phone and xbox if it's a universal app) then after a bit they could release it on steam as well, no harm no foul. 

 

MS already lets desktop apps be listed in the store, might as well take the next step and host/sell them as a option for a small fee, it's $19 a month to put apps on the store (winrt) they could offer legacy apps for less, $9.99 or even $5.99 a month and no revenue split.   EA has it's own store, Ubisoft has it's own store, I don't see why MS shouldn't do the same with desktop games with the Windows Store.

[gohpep]

Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 RC and Team Foundation Server 2013 Update 2 RTM release notes:

http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/news/2014-apr-2-vs

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2927432

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2927432

 

Download: http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/downloads/prerelease-software-downloads-vs

 

The CodeLens feature in Visual Studio provides developers with a heads-up display for finding information quickly without having to leave their code and offers insights from various available Indicators without losing code context.

 

Work Item Tagging is defined by a user and adds meta-data to a work item which enables a quick way to filter data without having to create queries or additional custom filters.

 

added the ability in response to customer requests to set a new start date for Cumulative Flow Diagrams, which restarts the diagram?s calculations based on the new start date.

 

added a new team setting for configuring working days for a project team ? effectively providing the ability to remove weekend days from burndown charts (a highly requested feature on the Visual Studio UserVoice).

 

made charts even more useful by enabling the pinning of charts to a team or project?s home page; making it simple to keep everyone informed on the data points the team finds most valuable.

 

enabled customizable work item chart series colorization via a simple to use color picker

 

added a new feature for exporting test plans, test suites, or test cases together with their respective properties to an HTML file for various offline uses (such as sharing with others over email or easier printing).

 

added a new feature called ?Shared Parameters?, which enables sharing of Test Case Parameters by consolidating similar parameter data in a single location and referencing it across multiple test cases.

 

improved Git source control implementation:

• Use the Annotate feature (aka blame) with Git
• Amend recent local commits using Visual Studio (similar to the command line: ?git amend?), as long as the commits have not yet been pushed to the TFS repository
• Push to or pull from a selected remote repository in Team Explorer without having to use the command line
• Roll back a commit to undo a check-in more easily
• Monitor or cancel long-running Git operations
• Use Ant or Maven on the build controller to build Java code managed in a Git repository (requires Team Explorer Everywhere (TEE) Update 1)

revamped the Team and Project home pages with a more visually appealing design that makes better use of screen real-estate on wider screen resolutions.

 

 

 

• Debugger
  • The Visual Studio debugger now supports a new string visualizer for JSON encoded strings that displays them as a treeview control and allows the developer to do things such as search, highlight, or copy a key/value pair
  • The .NET Managed Memory Analyzer has a new feature to inspect values of objects and instances of captured memory dumps
  • It is now possible to debug websites within the Windows Phone 8.1 emulator
• Performance Tools & Analyzers
  • A new CPU Usage tool is now available in the Performance and Diagnostics hub that can be used with WPF, Console, Windows Store 8.1, or Windows Phone 8.1 apps. This tool provides data on what functions are using the CPU and to what degree. This empowers the developer to make decisions about where to focus their effort optimizing their app code to achieve the best possible performance
  • A new Memory Usage tool is now available in the Performance and Diagnostics hub for analyzing new universal Windows apps or any app built using the Windows runtime using C#/VB/C++ and XAML
  • It is now possible to run more than one tool at a time in the Performance and Diagnostics hub while maintaining a common timeline so that you can save time, correlate data across tools to get better insight into performance issues, and inform performance tradeoffs
• IntelliTrace
  • IntelliTrace performance events collected by the Microsoft Monitoring Agent (MMA) have new features:
    • Group performance events and review hot paths within performance data
    • Jump to SQL when ADO.NET event data is available. This allows the use of Visual Studio SQL tooling to inspect the SQL query that was captured in the IntelliTrace data
    • Easily navigate to Actions/Controllers for data collected from ASP.NET MVC web sites
  • Exceptions data it is now easier to navigate by visualizing the data related to an exception on a Code Map when reviewing IntelliTrace information collected by the Microsoft Monitoring Agent (MMA)
• Windows Store Apps
  • Trigger a Prefetch when debugging Windows 8.1 store apps; enabling developers to manually trigger the Prefetch caching to test their program?s behavior or to validate that ContentPrefetcher is properly registered
  • Use Windows Azure Notification Hubs to send test notification messages to Windows Store or Phone apps and check the results in real-time

• Code Editor improvements and two new editors (for SASS & JSON files):
  • New SASS editor with features such as colorization, variable and Mixins IntelliSense, syntax validation, goto definition, color picker, and more
  • New JSON editor with features such as syntax validation, colorization, outlining, and support for IntelliSense (through JSON schema)
  • Improvements to LESS editor with features such as Knockout IntelliSense Upgrade, New URL Picker in HTML, Razor, CSS, LESS or SASS pages, and more
• Browser Link support for HTTPS connections, Single Page Applications (SPA), and static html files
• Updated ASP.NET default project templates for the latest platform releases including ASP.NET MVC, Web API, Web Pages, SignalR, and more
• New features for Microsoft Azure developers including:
  • Improved getting started experience with Azure via a new capability that can optionally link newly created websites directly from the ?File > New Project? dialog to a Windows Azure website or Virtual Machine. This enables simple publishing when needed later
  • Two new features in Server Explorer for Windows Azure Websites: a remote view feature that allows viewing/editing of live website files and the ability to view log files remotely
  • Brand new tooling support for working with Mobile Services that leverage .NET, including a new template for getting started with the new project type, as well as support for Remote Debugging

[gohpep]

More info on Orleans:

Sign up for beta: http://aka.ms/orleans

Code samples: https://orleans.codeplex.com/

[gohpep]

Make sure to sign up for .NET Native and Project Orleans on Microsoft Connect!

https://connect.microsoft.com/

 

It's a simple sign up process, and you almost get immediately accepted.

[gohpep]

Build Day 2 Keynote

You can create and manage virtual machines in Visual Studio.

You can capture images of databases instantly

[gohpep]

Deploy tools and configurations onto a virtual machine using Puppet or Powershell

Windows Azure will now support Java.

[George P Global Moderator]

Lots of VS news so far, they're making it an even more powerful.

[vcfan]

My prediction is that Microsoft will partner with Valve.

I think they are buying them. When Steve Ballmer was all of a sudden specifically mentioning nokia in interviews,way before news came out about talks that had taken place, and even before the Microsoft/nokia windows phone exclusivity deal, you knew something was up.

[gohpep]

I think they are buying them. When Steve Ballmer was all of a sudden specifically mentioning nokia in interviews,way before news came out about talks that had taken place, and even before the Microsoft/nokia windows phone exclusivity deal, you knew something was up.

They had a Steam guy for a while, and then fired him. Maybe they figured out just having one guy from Valve wouldn't cut it, but all of Valve would.

They've also said they're going to watch the Steam Machines with great interest.

[gohpep]

Rumor has it that we'll be getting Windows Phone 8.1 on the 14th

http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/3/5578114/windows-phone-8-1-available-april-14th

 

But this is probably in light of the rumor that they will ship on the 14th to manufacturers.

 

I still think it'll be the 10th.

[George P Global Moderator]

Rumor has it that we'll be getting Windows Phone 8.1 on the 14th

http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/3/5578114/windows-phone-8-1-available-april-14th

 

But this is probably in light of the rumor that they will ship on the 14th to manufacturers.

 

I still think it'll be the 10th.

 

Not far off either way, my phone is ready.

[HawkMan]

Dev preview is already installed on my phone from the last GDR update so.

Unfortunately the general update from MS tends to be less comprehensive than the final release with fixes from Nokia on Nokia phones. But it should be ok ape bough anyway. I can take what I get until official release in July or whatever.