Just a quick video to show the difference on how fast it is to create a simple “Hello World” app on all 3 platforms.

It’s Windows reimagined and reinvented from a solid core of Windows 7 speed and reliability. It’s an all-new touch interface. It’s a new Windows for new devices.

Download Windows 8 Consumer Preview - http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/download

Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express Beta for Windows 8 is your tool to build Metro style apps. It includes the Windows 8 SDK, Blend for Visual Studio, and project templates.

Download Visual Studio 11 Express Beta - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/br229516

Download Visual Studio 11 Beta – http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/downloads

Finally! HTML5 & CSS3 standards support for Visual Studio 2010. Download it now!

HTML5
VS Web Standards Update provides you intellisense and validation for most common HTML 5 features like:

Browser APIs

• Geo-Location – Having location aware websites is growing trend and now you will have full intellisense and validation within Visual Studio for creating websites which are location aware.  For sample view the source for the IE9 test drive demo.
• Local Storage – IE has been supporting local storage from IE8 onwards, now Visual Studio will provide you with full fidelity intellisense to create sites which can save state within browser.  For sample of try view source on HTML5 Demo Site

CSS3

This update supports intellisense and validation for most of the CSS3 modules including:

Additionally, if you are trying to make websites which work on a variety of platforms and browsers you will love the fact that Web Standards Update not only supports IE specific prefixes like –ms; but also other vendor prefixes like –webkit and –moz.

Sharable Links

• Download URL - http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/a15c3ce9-f58f-42b7-8668-53f6cdc2cd83
• VWD Team Announcement post by Mads - http:/logs.msdn.com/b/webdevtools/archive/2011/06/15/web-standards-update-for-visual-studio-2010-sp1.aspx
• Walkthrough post by Hanselman - http://www.hanselman.com/blog/AnnouncingTheWebStandardsUpdateHTML5SupportForTheVisualStudio2010Editor.aspx
• Reference post by Vishal - http://vishaljoshi.blogspot.com/2011/06/announcing-html5-css3-support-for.html

PS: The Web Standards Update works on both VS 2010 SP1 and VWD Express 2010 SP1.  Being a VS Extension, it does not support certain CSS3 selector syntax & Browser API intellisense which would require servicing the shipping bits.

Ever since the announcement of a paid-for product, .NET Reflector by RedGate which has been a free application that is now an essential tool to many .NET developers, there has been an uproar among the community developers regarding this move to completely change a free essential developer tool to a paid-for app.

JetBrains, the creator of the famous and popular ReSharper, dotTrace and dotCover, has now created a free decompiler tool that’s similar (if not better) than .NET Reflector called dotPeek.

dotPeek offers:

• Decompilation of .NET 1.0-4.0 assemblies to C#
• Code syntax highlighting and code insight features
• Complete keyboard support
• Visual Studio look-and-feel
• The full power of ReSharper-style navigation

Learn more about dotPeek and download an early build. Please submit bug reports and feature requests to the dotPeek issue tracker, and discuss the tool on the dotPeek forum.

For latest news and hints, follow dotPeek on twitter or like JetBrains on Facebook

Finally, have in mind that decompiling will also be available right in Visual Studio as part of the upcoming ReSharper 6.

Microsoft Visual Studio Productivity Power Tools is a set of extensions to Visual Studio Professional (and above) which improves developer productivity. Much of these new productivity enhancements are unknown to a lot of developers. This session will showcase most (if not all) the 21 various enhancements that you’re not using yet! Download the Visual Studio Productivity Power Tools here if you haven’t done so!

Date: 7th April 2010 (POSTPONED)
Time: 7pm
Place: Level 22, Microsoft, One Marina Boulevard, Conf Room SINOMB 22CF-12 (60) VTC
Speaker: ME!

If you are an ALM practitioner, lead, or manager who is passionate about mastering your craft, the Microsoft Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) practitioner conference will help you gain deeper insight into your application lifecycle.

You will also discover and learn about industry best practices that address additional development challenges, and how Microsoft’s ALM Solutions enable and support those best practices. The ALM practitioner conference will provide you with insights on how to use Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate for making better design, implementation, and technology selection decisions.

Who Should Attend
TDM, IT Manager, Project Manager, Application Manager, Architect, Development Team Leader, Developer, Programmer, Test & Quality Manager

Date
21^st April 2011 (Thursday)

Time
9:00am to 4:30pm
(Registration and breakfast starts at 9am)

Venue
Auditorium, Level 29, Tower 2,
Petronas Twin Towers, KLCC

Register here.

Who Is This Book for?

This book is for professional developers who are working with previous versions of Visual Studio and are looking to make the move to Visual Studio 2010 Professional.

What Is the Book About?

The book is not a language primer, a language reference, or a single technology book. It’s a book that will help professional developers move from previous versions of Visual Studio (starting with 2003 and on up). It will cover the features of Visual Studio 2010 through an application. It will go through a lot of the exciting new language features and new versions of the most popular technologies without putting the emphasis on the technologies themselves. It will instead put the emphasis on how you would get to those new tools and features from Visual Studio 2010. If you are expecting this book to thoroughly cover the new Entity Framework or ASP.NET MVC 2, this is not the book for you. If you want to read a book where the focus is on Visual Studio 2010 and on the reasons for moving to Visual Studio 2010, this is the book for you.

You can download a PDF of the book here.

You can download an XPS of the book here.

And you can download the book’s sample code here.

{Community} Technology Update 2010

The Singapore user group communities, Professional .NET User Group, SQL Server User Group, and Windows IT Pros User Group, once again, have come together to bring to you a day of in-depth sessions and demonstrations of the new Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 and Visual Studio 2010.

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 is packed with a wealth of new features and capabilities that can help organizations to scale with confidence on a trusted platform, improve IT and developer efficiency, and enable self service business intelligence. The benefits of the enhanced capabilities extend to application and multi-server management, complex event processing, master data services and powerful BI tools.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 is an integrated environment that simplifies the whole development lifecycle, from design to development. Developers can use existing skills to model, code, debug and deploy a growing number of applications types.

With SQL Server 2008 R2 and Visual Studio 2010, users will be able to create compelling applications that deliver business value soonest while maintaining the quality and integrity of your IT assets.

Why should you attend the event:

• To learn how significant new capabilities of SQL Server 2008 R2 to run your most demanding mission-critical applications, increase IT and developer efficiency, and deliver business insight where and when your users need it.
• To learn how Visual Studio 2010 can help you to unleash your creativity to deliver impactful solutions

Who should attend the event:
Database Administrators, IT Professionals, & Developers

This is a not-to-be-missed launch FOR THE COMMUNITY, BY THE COMMUNITY.

FREE FOR COMMUNITY MEMBERS, DETAILS ON REGISTRATION SITE.
Not yet a member? Join now for free.

Click here for detailed agenda and register for the event >>

For enquiries, please contact Vivian at
Email: vivian@rhapsodyconcept.com.sg
Tel: +65 6296 7769

• Visual Studio 2010 Resource Kit
• Visual Studio 2010 Keybinding Cards
• IronRuby 1.0
• IronPython 2.6.1
• ReSharper 5.0
• StyleCop
• StyleCop for ReSharper
• dotTrace 4.0
• dotCover
• nDepend v3
• Reflector
• Pex and Moles
• Code Contracts
• Reactive Extensions for .NET (RX)
• Spec Explorer
• Entity Framework Profiler
• Linq to Sql Profiler
• NHibernate Profiler
• TypeMock Isolator 2010
• F# PowerPack
• NaturalSpec 1.0.0
• Fake 1.0.0
• Silverlight 4
• Windows Phone Developer Tools (not available yet)
• XAML Power Toys
• XAML Editor IntelliSense Presenter
• more…?

This talk give an overview and cover as many changes in the .NET Framework 4.0 as possible in the time allocated, from the BCL (Base Class Library) to various interesting additions like the Managed Extensibility Framework, Code Contracts, Parallel Extensions and Dynamic Language Runtime.

If you’re interested in talks like this, come join us on 19th December 2009 at Microsoft Singapore, Auditorium, Level 21, One Marina Boulevard, to learn about what’s the upcoming technology coming from Microsoft and Visual Studio 2010. Remember, you have to pay a small token amount ($10 to $15) for this event.

============

It is that time of the year again. Coming 19^th Dec 2009, the community alliance is coming together again. Bringing you a full day of content, by the Communities to the Communities.

We have prepared 15 different sessions, 4 slots of Hands-On-Lab with its contents refined and shared later, Door Gifts, Buffet Lunch for attendees $10 MSPress Vouchers, 20% MCP Exam discounts and many more…

To keep the place abuzz, we have MS Press appearing with discounted books, Lucky Draw at end of day, Xbox 360 with Call Of Duty (Modern Warfare 2) waiting for you.

To find out more about the agenda or to register, please visit http://ctu.geeksengaged.com

For enquiries, please first visit the FAQ, then contact the registration team.

See you there at CTU 2009 II