Sunday, September 18, 2011

What is new in Visual Studio 11 ALM Features? Part1

Well, VS11 Comes with new great features that I was starving to see. Thank you for Brian Harry, and his team for the outstanding effort in this release. I expect that this version will rock up, and put itself at the Top of ALM solution products.

Code Review Workflow with Team Explorer

Visual Studio 11 Preview works hand in hand with Team Foundation Server 11 to provide best in class application lifecycle management. Visual Studio 11 facilities collaboration is by enabling developers to request and perform code reviews through using Team Explorer. This feature defines a workflow in Team Foundation Server that saves project state and routes review requests as work items to team members. These workflows are independent of any specific process or methodology, so you can incorporate code reviews at any convenient point in the project lifecycle.

The Request Review link in the My Work pane enables you to create a new code review task and assign it to one or more other developers.

The reviewer can accept or decline the review, and respond to any messages or queries associated with the code review, add annotations and more. Visual Studio 11 displays the code by using a “Diff” format, showing the original code and the changes made by the developer requesting the review. This feature enables the reviewer to quickly understand the scope of the changes and work more efficiently.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Announcing Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview

Today in the BUILD keynote Jason Zenders had shown some of the new functionality in Microsoft® Visual Studio® 11 Developer Preview and Microsoft® Team Foundation Server Preview.  MSDN subscribers can download the previews today as well as the new release of .NET Framework 4.5 Developer Preview; general availability is on Friday, September 16.

The following is how Jason has concluded the announcement:

(Some exciting announcements are being made here at BUILD.  Visual Studio 11 provides an integrated development experience that spans the entire lifecycle of software creation from architecture to code creation, testing and beyond. This release adds support for Windows 8 and HTML 5, enabling you to target platforms across devices, services and the cloud.  Integration with Team Foundation Server enables the entire team to collaborate throughout the development cycle to create quality applications.

.NET 4.5 has focused on top developer requests across all our key technologies, and includes new features for Asynchronous programming in C# and Visual Basic, support for state machines in Windows Workflow, and increased investments in HTML5 and CSS3 in ASP.NET.)

Monday, April 11, 2011

Gartner: Microsoft Windows Phone market share to surpass Apple’s iOS in 2015

It seems that the partnership Between Windows Phone 7 (WP7), and Nokia that has been establish began to deliver its fruits very early. Gartner group has released a new market study that declare their predictions of the Smartphone OS market till 2015.

Gartner has predicted that by 2015, WP7 will be the second most commonly used OS over Smartphone surpassing Apple’s IOS.

With a Market size that will exceed 1 Billion Device by 2015, Gartner predicts that Nokia will push Windows Phone well into the mid-tier of its portfolio by the end of 2012, driving the platform to be the third largest in the worldwide ranking by 2013. Gartner has revised its forecast of Windows Phone’s market share upward, solely by virtue of Microsoft’s alliance with Nokia. Although this is an honorable performance it is considerably less than what Symbian had achieve in the past underlying the upward battle that Nokia has to face.

Gartner Worldwide Mobile Communications Device Open OS Sales to End Users by OS
Source: Gartner (April 2011)

From my point of view, this will not only affect WP7 as an Operating system, but also, it will pushes Visual Studio as one of the most supported Developer’s platform for Smartphone Application development.

Gartner’s detailed forecast is available in the report “Forecast: Mobile Communications Devices by Open Operating System, Worldwide, 2008-2015.” The report is available on Gartner’s website at www.gartner.com/resId=1619615.

Source: Gartner, Inc.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

New Version of TFS Windows Shell Extension is about to get released

A new version of TFS Windows Shell Extension is about to get released within the next couple of days. This version will come with support for new capabilities that could be done through the new version from Windows Explorer. Shelving will be one of the great features that will be included into the new release.

Windows shell extension has been first introduced as a part of the December 2008 Power Tools’ release. It allows you to do many of the version control operations directly inside the Windows Explorer without using the Team Explorer.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Visual Studio ALM Rangers Team Releases:Visual Studio TFS Branching Guide 2010

Couple of weeks ago, the VS ALM Rangers team has released a the Visual Studio TFS Branching Guide for 2010.

This guidance is created by the Rangers who have the mission to provide out of band solutions for missing features or guidance. This content was created with support from Microsoft Product Group, Microsoft Most Valued Professionals (MVPs) and technical specialists from technology communities around the globe, giving you a real-world view from the field, where the technology has been tested and used.

Branching and merging of software is a very large topic. It is an area where there is a lot of maturity in the software industry. This Ranger solution focuses on applied and practical examples of branching that you can use right now. The 2010 release includes discussions around branching concepts and strategies but also focuses on practical hands-on labs.

Supported by 20K+ of downloads, I Advise everyone to download it, to read it, and to apply it.

Download it

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2010 and Team Foundation Server® 2010 RTM virtual machine for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V is now available

Team System Product Team has released a new virtual machine with latest updates for TFS as well as for Power Tools.

In addition, the operating system and programs installed were patched with all updates as of December 8, 2010. This virtual machine will stop working on June 1, 2011, when the trial software expires. A new version of this virtual machine will be made available before this one expires.

The Virtual machine could be used under Hyper-V on Windows 2008, and 2008 R2, Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 on  Windows Vista, and Windows Virtual PC for Windows 7.

You can check more details about the virtual machine on Brian Keller Blog or got directly Here, Or go directly to download the Hyper-V version form Here.

 

Enjoy it :)