Tag: Visual Studio 2017

AIAzureDevelopmentEventsProductivity

Microsoft Build 2018–Day 2 Highlights

on May 8, 2018

Today’s keynote by Joe Belfiore was focused on Multi-sense + Multi-device for Microsoft 365, which is Windows, Office and EMS

Image showing how Microsoft 365 brings together Office 365, Windows 10, and Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS), a complete, intelligent, and secure solution to empower employees.

Announcements

  • Fluent Design System updates.
  • UWP XAML Islands, which lets you incorporate UWP into WinForms, WPF and Win32 applications. This also means you can start to bring in the Fluent Design System into these UI frameworks.
  • Windows UI Library, which brings native platform controls as NuGet packages instead of being tied to the OS version. This will work from the Windows Anniversary Update and newer.
  • .NET Core 3.0, which will support side-by-side runtimes, along with support for WinForms, WPF and UWP.
  • MSIX, which is dubbed the best technology for installing applications on Windows. This inherits the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) features, works across Enterprise or Store distributions, and supports all Windows applications.
  • Windows SDK Insider Preview – https://aka.ms/winsdk
  • New developer revenue sharing model. Developers will get 85% when their app is found in the Microsoft store, and 95% when you provide your customers to your app in the Microsoft store.
  • Microsoft Launcher on Android will support Timeline for cross-device application launching. On iOS this will be supported through Microsoft Edge.
  • A new “Your Phone” experience coming soon to Windows 10 that enables you to see your connected phone text messages, photos and notifications and then interact with them without having to use your phone. Really neat experience – now if only they support Windows Mobile 10 Smile
  • Microsoft Sets was officially shown and demonstrated how it can be used for an easier way to organize your work and allow you to get back to work where you left off when ready. This means not having to have 25+ tabs open in Chrome or Edge. Nice!
  • Adaptive Cards is being added to Microsoft 365, which will enable developers to create rich interactive content within conversations. They demonstrated a GitHub Adaptive Card for Outlook (365) where you could comment and close an issue. Another example shown was paying for your invoice from an email.
  • There was a lot of buzz for Microsoft Graph, which is core to the Microsoft 365 platform. Microsoft Graph helps developers connect the dots between people, schedules, conversations, and content within the Microsoft cloud.
  • Cortana and Alexa start speaking to one another. Sometime in the future you will be able to access your Alexa device through Windows 10 and likewise on an Amazon Echo you will ne able to speak to Cortana.

Enjoy!

References

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/events/build

Modernizing applications for our multi-sense, multi-device world

Microsoft 365 empowers developers to build intelligent apps for where and how the world works

AIAzureDevelopmentEventsProductivity

Microsoft Build 2018 – Day 1 Highlights

on May 8, 2018

This is my first attendance at the annual Microsoft Build conference taking place in Seattle, WA. I have to tell you that so far I’m not disappointed. Here are some of the highlights from today’s events:

  • Azure is becoming the world’s computer: Azure | Azure Stack | Azure IoT Edge | Azure Sphere.
  • Azure IoT Edge runtime which runs on Windows or Linux is now being open sourced.
  • Microsoft showed off Cortana and Alexa integration which was pretty cool.
  • New Azure AI infrastructure announced: Project Brainwave which is a real-time AI on cloud and edge devices.
  • Announced Project Kinect for Azure, an Azure AI-enabled edge device.
  • Visual Studio Live Share is now generally available. This provides real-time collaborative development, shared debugging, independent views and works across Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code (Windows, Mac and Linux).
  • Azure Event Grid is getting new improvements like dead lettering (DLQ) and custom retry policies. Event Grid is also adding new event publishers for Azure Media Services and Azure Container Registry, and new event handlers for Storage Queue and Relay Hybrid Connections. Finally Azure Event Grid is providing an alternative form of endpoint validation. Event Grid provides reliable event delivery at massive scale (millions of events per second), and it eliminates long polling and hammer polling, and the associated costs of latency.
  • Azure Cosmos had some interesting updates like the new multi-master write support. It also provides API support for MongoDB, SQL, Table Storage, Gremlin Graph, Spark, and Casandra.
  • Azure Search now integrates Azure Cognitive Services to provide built-in enrichment of content using AI models, and it enables immersive search experiences over any data.
  • The Fluent Design System which Microsoft first debuted at Build 2017, is expanding beyond Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps and will be available for Windows Forms, WPF and native Win32 applications.
  • Windows Timeline is coming to iOS and Android.
  • Azure Functions updates: Durable Functions reaches general availability, and Azure Functions now leverages the App Service Diagnostics.
  • .NET Core 3.0 and .NET Framework 4.8 announced were announced, and .NET Core 3.0 is coming to desktop development (awesome!)
  • Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7 and the next update version 15.8 preview 1 were released.
  • Visual Studio App Center integration with GitHub.
    • Visual Studio IntelliCode announced, which brings you the next generation of developer productivity by providing AI-assisted development.

    This already feels like a lot but really it’s just scratching the surface. I’m looking forward to what is announced today in the keynote followed by more technical workshops and sessions.

    Enjoy!

    References

    https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/events/build

    Development

    Updates to the New Project Dialog in Visual Studio 2017

    on March 28, 2018

    With the release of Visual Studio 2017 Update 6 (version 15.6.x), you might have noticed that there was an update done to the New Project dialog to move the .NET Framework version selector down to the bottom below the solution name. This makes the New Project dialog cleaner and shows you which version of the .NET Framework will be used when creating your project.

    image

    The Framework selector disappears when selecting non .NET Framework projects like ASP.NET Core, UWP, etc.

    Enjoy!

    Development

    Visual Studio 2017 (15.6) has new Update Experience

    on March 8, 2018

    After updating to Visual Studio 2017 (15.6) earlier today I noticed a minor update is out (15.6.1) and you will notice a new update experience as shown here. The updated dialog shows the current version, the update version and a link for the release notes:

    image

    image

    This update (15.6.1) only takes a couple minutes to apply.

    Enjoy!

    AzureInfographicsMobile

    Resources for Mobile apps using Xamarin + Azure

    on February 27, 2018

    Earlier this week the Mobile apps using Xamarin + Azure poster was released. It serves as your essential guide to the most relevant cloud services provided by Azure for you as a mobile developer using Xamarin with Visual Studio and Azure.

    You can download your poster here.

    Enjoy!

    References

    https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2018/02/21/your-guide-to-azure-services-for-apps-built-with-xamarin/?utm_source=vs_developer_news&utm_medium=referral

    DevelopmentMobile

    Troubleshooting the installation of Xamarin Android Device Manager

    on February 26, 2018

    UPDATED: Feb 26 2018 (later that day)

    This post is a follow up to how I got Xamarin Android Device Manager up and running on Windows. Please read the Xamarin Developer guide first which explains how to install and use the Xamarin Android Device Manager for Visual Studio on Windows (or for Mac). Please keep in mind that at the time of this post the Xamarin Android Device Manager is still in preview.

    For me I’m running the latest version of Visual Studio 2017 (15.5.7) and I already had the Xamarin components installed and working. Up until now I wasn’t really using the Android emulators for any Xamarin development as I was more focused on iOS and Windows. However now I have a need to and so I decided to try out the new Xamarin Android Device manager. Why you might ask? Well as of Android SDK Tools version 26.0.1, Google has removed support for their UI-based AVD and SDK managers in favor of their new CLI (Command Line Interface) tools.

    After having installed the latest version of the Xamarin Device Manager installer for Windows, I ran it from the Start menu with Administrator privileges like so:

    sshot-360

    And this is the error I get:

    sshot-360-1

    I ran through the troubleshooting section section and the issue is that I was missing the Android SDK (requires 26 or higher). Perhaps a one of the latest Visual Studio updates caused this issue because now none of the Android tooling like device or emulator are working. Perhaps installing the Xamarin Device Manager broke it, I’m not sure but it’s broken. The only way I was able to resolve this was to run the Visual Studio Installer and uninstalled the the Xamarin SDK Manager and re-install it. Here is what I did.

    My Solution to Fixing Missing Android SDK

    1. Run Visual Studio Installer and then click on the Modify button:

    image

    2. Now go to the Individual components tab and Remove Xamarin SDK Manager and then click on the Modify button to apply the changes. Take notice of the amount of disk space that will be freed up. For me it was 113 MB.

    image

    3. Now do steps 1 and 2 again but this time add back the Xamarin SDK Manager and then notice the amount of disk space required for these changes…for me it was 1.4 GB, obviously something screwed up and I was missing a great deal. Now apply the changes by clicking on the Modify button.

    Now when you run the Xamarin Android Device Manager from the start menu (with administrator rights) it should load up as expected. Now if you are like me and don’t have the latest Android SDK Tools, then you are then presented with the following dialog prompting you to download them from the Xamarin Android SDKs and Tools manager:

    sshot-361

    When the Xamarin Android SDK and Tools manager opens, review the SDK platforms you want installed and then click over to the Tools tab:

    sshot-362

    In the Tools tab, expand the Android SDK Tools selection and change the selected tooling to the current version which is 26.1.1 and then click on the Apply Changes button. If you’re just changing the Android SDK Tools, this should only take a couple min at most to apply. Once it’s done close down the Android SDKs and Tools manager.

    sshot-363

    Now go back to Visual Studio (re-run if you have it running already) and run the Android Emulator Manager from the Tools – > Android menu.

    image

    You will now be presented with the new Android Devices manager. When you first launch the Android Device Manager, it presents a screen that displays all currently configured virtual devices. For each device, the Name, Operating System (Android API Level), CPU, Memory size, and screen resolution are displayed:

    image

    I then went on and added a new option for Android Oreo and when I tried to run it I got another error:

    image

    Now it looks like I need to install another tool, Intel’s HAXM which requires Hyper-V be disabled.

    Summary

    What seemed like a quick and easy update has turned into quite the adventure. It’s 2018…why can’t this be more simple!

    Enjoy!

    References

    Channel 9 | The Xamarin Show: Snack Pack | The New Xamarin Android Device Manager

    How to setup and create Android virtual devices using Xamarin Android Device Manager

    Installing Xamarin.Android on Windows

    Installation Instructions for Intel® Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager (Intel® HAXM) – Microsoft Windows*

    Uncategorized

    How to Configure Git in Visual Studio to Prune Branches during a Fetch

    on January 2, 2018

    If you’ve been using Git from within Visual Studio 2017 you might be aware of the fact that when performing a fetch it would not automatically prune your local list of branches that no longer exist on the server. Typically you would have to open up a Command Prompt and run the following command to cleanup your list of branches that exist on the remote:

    > git remote prune origin

    image

    Well now with Visual Studio 2017 Update 5 you can now configure your global and repository settings to prune your local list of branches on every fetch. Let’s take a look at how you can configure this.

    First download and install Visual Studio 2017 Update 5. You can do this from within Visual Studio under the Tools menu:

    image

    Once you have Visual Studio 2017 Update 5 installed, go to the Team Explorer pane and click on Settings where you can configure your default behavior for your Global and/or Repository Settings:

    image

    image

    Now you can change the setting to prune remote branches on every fetch. In my opinion this should be the default value.

    image

    Another nice addition to the Git settings in Visual Studio 2017 Update 5 is the ability to Rebase your changes when you pull. I’ll explore that in a future post.

    In summary when enabling the prune on every fetch, this means your local list of branches is always up-to-date with the remote. Pruning will cleanup and remove your local tracking branches that no longer exist on the server.

    Enjoy!

    References

    Git Configuration: Configure your default behavior

    DevelopmentInfographics

    Visual Studio 2017 Infographic – What’s New

    on April 1, 2017

    Curious about what’s new in Visual Studio 2017? The Visual Studio team has released an infographic with all the new features. Take a look.

    Enjoy!

    VisualStudio2017_ProductLaunchPoster

    Development

    Visual Studio 2017 has Landed

    on March 7, 2017

    Visual Studio 2017 is finally here and you can download now. Visual Studio 2017 enables you to be more productive for any application and on any platform.

    If you download Visual Studio 2017 by March 14, you’ll get a 60-day access to Xamarin University which is a sweet deal.

    What’s New

    Visual Studio 2017 has a brand new installation experience which includes a minimal footprint for Visual Studio. Installation is quick (minutes not hours) and finally uninstalls cleanly. It’s also much easier to just install the features you want and need.

    image

    Quick Reference of New Features

    For a full list of all new features, please take a look at the release notes.

    Enjoy!

    image

    References

    Visual Studio
    Visual Studio 2017 Download
    Visual Studio 2017 System Requirements
    Visual Studio 2017 Release Notes