Visual Studio 2010 will ship on April 12th. We will be celebrating this HUGE release with a number of LIVE launch events taking place around the US as well as the World. The theme for this launch event is “Life Runs on Code”. We will have sessions covering  Application Lifecycle Management, SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 development, Windows, Web as well as the recently announced Windows Phone 7 development all with Visual Studio 2010.

One of the first launch events will be taking place in Chicago on April 29th. I will be presenting the Web and Windows Phone 7 sessions in Chicago. We hope to see you there!

What: Visual Studio 2010 Launch (Chicago)

Where: Chicago Marriott Oak Brook, 1401 W. 22nd Street, Oak Brook, IL (map)

When: Thursday, April 29th, 2010

Register

These events are happening all over the US, for other cities, visit the Launch site. We are also hosting a number of smaller launch events. You can find a city near you by visiting MSDN Events.

Visual Studio 2010

What’s New in Visual Studio 2010

Visual Studio on MSDN

Visual Studio 2010 Training Course on Channel 9

Visual Studio 2010 Training Kit

Visual Studio 2010 Tips & Tricks

Walkthrough: Debugging a Parallel Application

Web Deployment: Web.Config Transformation

Web Deployment in Visual Studio 2010

The Visual Studio Gallery

Visual Studio Extensibility

.NET 4.0

What’s new in .NET Framework 4 Client Profile Beta 2

.NET Framework Client Profile

Entity Framework 4.0: Pluralization

Stephen Toub’s Session at PDC on Parallel Computing

Code Contracts (DevLabs)

What’s New in ASP.NET 4 and Visual Web Developer

ASP.NET MVC

Dynamic Data

.NET Developer Center

Data Developer Center

Concurrency (Parallelism)

WPF and Windows Forms

SharePoint 2010

Learn SharePoint 2010 on Channel 9

SharePoint 2010 Developer Center

The release of Visual Studio 2010 is right around the corner. For several months, developers have been plugging away at the Beta bits and we have received valuable feedback. Based upon that feedback, the Visual Studio team has decided to push out a Release Candidate (RC) that is now available for you to download.

Jason Zander provides some additional details regarding the RC…

We got a lot of invaluable feedback on Beta 2 through Connect as well as your survey responses.  In particular many of you pointed out areas of performance where we were not at parity with VS2008 and it was impacting your ability to adopt the product.  Some of those areas of feedback included general UI responsiveness (including painting, menus, remote desktop and VMs), editing (typing, scrolling, and Intelisense), designers (Silverlight and WPF in particular), improved memory usage, debugging (stepping, managed / native interop), build times, and solution/project load.

You can now download the Visual Studio Release Candidate and continue to provide your valuable feedback.

Scott Guthrie is taking it one step further by inviting you to submit your feedback to the Visual Studio Connect website, but also sending him an email directly:

Our goal with releasing the public RC build today is to get a lot of eyes on the product helping to find and report the remaining bugs we need to fix.  If you do find an issue, please submit a bug report via the Visual Studio Connect site and also please send me an email directly (scottgu@microsoft.com) with details about it.  I can then route your email to someone to investigate and follow-up directly (which can help expedite the investigation).

The team is also looking for feedback regarding the install experience as well.

Visual Studio 2010 is a MAJOR release. A number of items (based on customer feedback) has been ripped and replaced with leading-edge technologies. All of this effort to gain customer feedback is to make sure we’re ALL (Microsoft and the community of developers and users) is happy with this release. We all want a tool that is going to help us succeed in what we do – write software!

Go download the bits now!

These sessions are targeted toward Developers, Architects, and Quality Assurance teams. Attendees will be given the unique opportunity to have a first glimpse into the products and interact directly with the Redmond team responsible for designing and delivering these products to the market. We will cover a broad range of important topics including Software Quality Assurance, historical debugging, manual test runner, test impact analysis and test lab management.

Book raffle and Zune Give-a-way

One random attendee will be selected to receive a brand new Zune HD!

Agenda:

Today Soma announced the release of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Fx 4 Beta 2.  Soma also added a little nugget of information around the ship date of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 – March 22, 2010.

The Beta 2 bits are available today for MSDN Subscribers and general availability will be October 21st. It was also announced that Beta 2 comes with a  “Go Live” license, which essentially states that Microsoft will provide a smooth upgrade path to the final release as well as provide support for the product.

Visual Studio 2010 is a huge undertaking. There are many enhancements not the least of which is a complete rewrite of the shell! There are also a number of improvements to the underlying .NET Framework to provide the means to build great applications on top of Windows 7. The first step for you is to download and install VS2010 and .NET 4 Beta 2. Brian Keller provides a nice walkthrough on how to download and install the necessary bits and get you up and running.

The next step is to download the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit and work your way through all of the great training content. In addition, I’d set aside some time to watch the series of 10-4 episodes on Channel9 and learn about all the new features in VS2010 and .NET 4.

From there, I’d ask that you report bugs and provide feedback on the Visual Studio Connect Site. With your feedback we can be sure that Visual Studio 2010 is the product that *you* demand on March 22, 2010.

If you’re looking to ramp up your skills in the land of XAML, I’d recommend adding these events to your calendar. Don’t worry if you can’t make the Live Meeting sessions as those will also be available on-demand.

Here’s a list of the great content you have to choose from…

XAML Continuum

XAML is the lingua franca of both Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation, Microsoft’s presentation technologies for the future. In this introductory session, learn how XAML empowers designers and developers to build rich Web and desktop applications. You’ll see how Blend can be used by designers to create assets and applications, and how Visual Studio 2008 to quickly implement an application’s functionality. What’s more, you’ll understand how Blend and Visual Studio work together to enable seamless workflow between designers and developers.

XAML for Designers

Throughout XAMLFest, you’ll participate by building a Silverlight application from the ground up. In this session, you’ll jump Microsoft Expression Blend to begin creating this demonstration app. You’ll learn the basics of project creation, see how to navigate within Blend, and how XAML defines an application’s user interface.

XAML for Developers

In this first session geared towards developers, use Visual Studio 2008 to create and explore a basic Silverlight application. You’ll gain a better understanding of Silverlight anatomy and architecture, and you’ll see how Resource markup extensions work. You will also gain a better understanding of the deployment model used by Silverlight, and the role of Silverlight’s cross-platform, plug-in-based CLR.

XAML Fundamentals

In this recorded session, you’ll gain a solid foundational understanding of how XAML is used to build applications. First, you’ll see how XAML’s layout containers can be used to create interfaces that scale and re-size cleanly and intelligently. Next, you’ll see how you can use a variety of built-in controls to quickly create a working user interface. Finally, you’ll understand the role of XAML in data binding, and you’ll see how you can bind controls and properties using markup or code.

Layouts and Controls in Blend

In this live session, you’ll continue to build the sample application that you started creating the previous day. Here, you’ll create your application’s layout and begin adding controls. You’ll explore basic element binding using Blend. At the end of the session you’ll have a working Silverlight application that exhibits some basic functionality.

Layouts and Controls in Visual Studio

This session will begin with an exploration of application layout in XAML, using Visual Studio. And although there is a lot of functionality built-in to the existing framework, API and controls, there are times when you need to add some custom functionality in order to get your application to behave just the right way. To that end, you’ll use Visual Studio to build a simple value converter that can be used by your sample application. Along the way, you’ll understand the role of value converters and you’ll see how you can use code-behind to create and manipulate XAML objects. 

Prototyping

With today’s emphasis on usability and appealing user interfaces, it’s more important than ever to prototype your applications. In this session, you’ll see how new tools in Blend 3 enable you to quickly create working prototypes that can provide a foundation for building the actual application. You’ll learn about SketchFlow, “Wiggly styles”, sample data, and you’ll see how you can create a prototype that allows you to easily gather user feedback. Finally, you’ll see how you can save hours and hours by using Blend 3’s spec generation tool.

New Prototyping Features in Blend 3

In this session focusing on practical guidance on prototyping, you’ll use Blend to add screens, compositions and navigation behaviors to the sample application. You’ll add sample data sources to screens, sketch prototype user experience, and generate a spec document. 

Building a Domain Model in Visual Studio

In this session, you’ll use the spec document that was generated in the earlier design session to build a domain model consistent with sample data. You’ll also add notification interfaces that enable consumers to subscribe to changes in the domain model. Finally, you’ll bind the user experience to the domain model.  Live Meeting on June 3, 2009 / 1:00 PM PDT (4 pm EDT)

Patterns and Practices

With the release of its Expression tools for designers, Microsoft has prompted a re-evaluation of user interface design and workflow distribution. Now that Expression is approaching its third major release, a number of patterns and practices have emerged. In this session, you’ll see an approach to workflow that plays to the strengths of both designers and developers. Also, you’ll understand the importance of the “integrator” role in making sure this workflow runs smoothly.

Styles, Resources, Templates and Animations

XAML makes it easier for designers to take on more responsibility when it comes to implementing user interface design. In the past, most everything beyond static screenshots and mockups required a developer to write behind-the-scenes code. In this session, you’ll see how Expression empowers designers to add styling, create templates, and define animations. You’ll see how the Visual State Manager is used to provide animation between element states. You’ll also see Blend 3’s new support for importing Adobe® Photoshop® content. Live Meeting on June 4, 2009 / 9:00 AM PDT (noon EDT)

Implementing the M-V-VM Pattern

The Model/View/ViewModel (M-V-VM) pattern is a modern variation of the classic Model/View/Controller (MVC) approach to UI design. In this session, you’ll use Visual Studio to implement M-V-VM for the sample application. You’ll bind the user experience to the view model, and explore templates and animations in both XAML and managed code. Live Meeting on June 4, 2009 / 1:00 PM PDT (4 PM EDT)

Upsizing

Up until this point, most of the work you’ve done in XAMLFest has been using Silverlight, with sample data. In this session, you’ll see how an application can leverage endpoints and Service-Oriented Architectures. You’ll also see how Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) fits into the picture – how XAML and .NET enable reusability between Silverilght and WPF applications, and how to leverage features that are unique to WPF. You’ll also get a sneak peek at some of the exciting innovations coming in .NET 4.0.

Using Blend to Create WPF Apps and Controls

You can build great Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) apps with Blend, too, and in this session you’ll see exactly that. You’ll build a rich desktop client to complement the sample application you’ve been working on, and in doing so you’ll learn how to migrate screens, resources, styles and assets from Silverlight to WPF. This session will explore the similarities and differences between Silverlight and WPF applications.  Live Meeting on June 5, 2009 / 9:00 AM PDT (noon EDT)

Code Reusability between Silverlight and WPF

In this final session of XAMLFest, you’ll gain a solid understanding of WPF application architecture and development. You’ll implement a service endpoint that provides a domain model that can be used by both Silverlight and WPF. In addition, you’ll get some hands-on experiencing developing controls and applications with Silverlight/WPF re-use in mind. Live Meeting on June 5, 2009 / 1:00 PM PDT (4 PM EDT)

You can download the bits, submit feedback to the Connect site and participate in the ongoing conversations on the Beta forums. The documentation has been removed from the download for Beta 1 but you can find all of the documentation online on MSDN.

Once you kicked off the download, be sure to read What’s New in .NET Framework 4 and What’s New in Visual Studio 2010.

You can install Visual Studio 2010 side-by-side with other versions of Visual Studio or you can drop it into a virtualized machine with something like Virtual PC.

Once you have everything up and running, download the Visual Studio 2010 Training Kit to learning about the latest features and enhancements. There are also a number of walkthroughs posted highlighting some of these new features.

Enjoy!

We received quite a bit of feedback from the MIX’09 conference on why Microsoft was pushing WPF aside and focusing their efforts on Silverlight. This is certainly not the case and the WPF story is stronger than ever. This is evident in the Visual Studio teams strategy (and several product teams across Microsoft) to bet on WPF for their front-end technology for Visual Studio 2010. MIX’09 is a conference focused on Web design and development and WPF is specific to building client-based applications.

For the vast majority of enterprise developers, their day to day efforts are spent applying their skills in building and maintaining line-of-business applications. Prior to WPF, these types of client-side applications have been built using technologies such as WinForms. WPF is focused on bringing the client-side technologies forward and providing the necessary tools and technologies to offer our users a better user experience and building the next-generation types of applications. However, there is a significant (but short-lived) learning curve in bringing your .NET skills to targeting WPF applications.

Thankfully, Karl Shifflet and Jaime Rodriquez are hitting the road across 4 cities across the U.S. as well as London to provide a *free* 2-day training class focused on building line-of-business applications with WPF. Karl Shifflett is a former Microsoft MVP and current Program Manager for Cider (Cider is the code name for the WPF designer in Visual Studio). Jaime Rodriquez is a Microsoft Technical Evangelist focusing on WPF and Silverlight. You can’t find any better instructors than the ones who are actually building the technology! If you’re interested in learning more about WPF and how it can help you bring more engaging user experiences to your users, I highly suggest attending this event.

Date, Location, and Logistics

Los Angeles, CA, 4/24 -4/25

London, UK, 5/15 -5/16

New York, NY, 5/29-5/30

Chicago, IL, 6/12-6/13

Phoenix, AZ, 6/5-6/6

Agenda

Day One:

• Lap Around WPF
• WPF Tools ( Blend, Visual Studio 2008)
• Graphics Subsystem
• Layout
• WPF Fundamentals and new concepts (Application Model, Dependency Properties, Trees (logical & visual),  Events, Threading)
• Resources
• Controls
• Styling
• Templating
• Q&A with instructors at end of day

Day Two:

• WPF integration with Win32 and Windows Forms
• Data binding
• Introduction to Model-View-ViewModel
• Commanding in M-V-VM
• Views, Navigation and Transitions
• Data Validation
• Error handling, Model dialogs, Logging
• Unit Testing
• MVVM & LOB tips and tricks
• Q&A with the instructor

Thanks to everyone who came this go round. Please, if you have any comments or suggestions on how we can make these events better, please leave a comment.

My first session on A Tour and Discussion of CodePlex came awfully early in the  morning when Dan Rigsby dragged myself, Brian Gorbett and our new friends from Findlay, Ohio out for a night of pre-techfest festivities. As a side note, if you feel your ego is getting to bloated, just go to a bar where you are the oldest one there! Ugh. Here are a few links from the session…

Resource Links:

http://codeplex.com

Wikipedia definition for Open Source

CodePlex Team Blog

Article on CodePlex support for TortoiseSVN

Facebook Developer Toolkit Project Page

Sara Ford’s Blog

In my WPF session, WPF, WTF? No…WPF! It’s all about XAML these days, we had an amazing turnout – standing room only! There can only be a few explanations as to why… A.) the room only had 10 chairs available, B.) all of the other sessions at the time were canceled, or C.) there is a LOT of interest in building WPF applications. I hope it’s the latter! As with all my WPF sessions I’ve presented in the past, there was just WAY to much content to fit in a short amount of time. I need to either take this session and ask for two time slots to cover it, or just pair down the session to fit it into the standard 60-75 minute time slots. There is just SO much to talk about, it would be hard to pair it down. Here are the resources from the session…

Resource Links:

MSDN Virtual Lab on Building WPF applications

http://windowsclient.net learning resources

Expression Learning Resources