Create better Web applications by writing less code, thanks to the many new server controls in ASP .NET 2.0.
Visual Studio 2005 now lets you debug 64-bit applications with nearly identical capabilities as in 32-bit application debugging.
Rapidly convert your 32-bit ASP .NET 2.0 code into a native 64-bit application, without and recoding or manual recompiling.
Easily check your pages for compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines using Visual Studio 2005.
Creating a custom task pane for your Word or Excel application is now easier with the new action panes introduced in Visual Studio 2005 tools for office.
Improvements have been made in the bookmark management system through the addition of named bookmarks support and organization of bookmarks using folders.
The new Application Designer in Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Architects gives users a design surface for visualizing and defining service oriented applications for development and deployment.
Application diagrams created using the Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Architects can be committed to code, automatically creating a Visual Studio project with skeletal code files.
Code synchronization helps to keep application diagrams created in Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Architects in synchronization with code as development proceeds.
Manage your project’s images, icons, strings, and other resources easily with the new Resource Designer in Visual Studio 2005.
Now you can more easily manage user preferences, database connections, and other information your application needs to store on the computer where it is installed.
Assemblies are the building blocks of the .NET Framework; they form the fundamental unit of functionality for deployment, version control, reuse, activation scoping, and security permissions.
You no longer need to edit a text file to customize your application’s assembly information, now you can use a handy new dialog box.
When a new build is created in Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server, all source code changes made since the last build are associated with the build, making it easier to track changes made between builds.
When a new build is created in Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server, work items such as bugs or tasks may be associated with the build, identifying work done since the last build.
Team Foundation Server enforces atomic check-in to help maintain the integrity of files under source control.
If your code fails to compile, it’s now easier than ever to identify and fix the problem in Visual Basic 2005.
The Automatic and Manual Conflict Resolution Tool handles issues caused by multiple users working on different versions of the same file.
The Pocket PC has a feature that can automatically launch an application when any new external storage is detected, such as the insertion of a CompactFlash or Secure Digital card. This feature is typically used to provide an auto-installation feature for software.
Team Foundation Server enables team members to develop software in parallel; this includes working on one or more files in parallel. At any time, the changes from multiple team members can automatically be merged into one seamless file.
It is frustrating and inefficient to lose your unsaved work, so Visual Studio 2005 can now automatically recover your work using periodically saved backups of your files.
The Visual Studio 2005 Integrated Development Environment (IDE) includes Smart Tag support for auto-using statements.
With the Visual Studio 2005 source code editor, Intellisense and new features for formatting, navigating and validating your HTML markup are available throughout your files.
Publish and administer Web sites more easily with the powerful combination of ASP .NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005.
Branching allows the creation of multiple similar code bases.
With Visual Studio Team System (VSTS), you can easily find, track, and view bugs by using the Bug List report.
The Bugs by Priority report in Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server gives development teams insight into the status of the development effort and bug triage.
Getting a clean, functioning build of your project is a vitally important part of the development process.
The Builds Details Report in Visual Studio 2005 provides comprehensive information about a build run using Team Foundation Build.
Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Build provides the functionality of a public build lab that is fully integrated with source control, reporting, and work item tracking.
Team Foundation Server offers the option of running automatic tests and code analysis when it produces a build.
Build reports in the Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server build lab include a summary of any build validation tests that were running during the build.
The Builds Report provides a single location where team members can find builds and information about builds run in the Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server build lab.
You can develop and debug database objects for your application in Visual Studio 2005, even if you don't have access to SQL Server 2005.
Team Foundation Server is ideal for geographically distributed teams because of its server-based nature.
Now you can see at a glance where you have made changes to your code, and which of those changes have been saved.
With Team Foundation Server Check-in Notes, administrators may collect data from users during the check-in process.
Team Foundation Server check-in policies provide a way for administrators to enforce development practices across a development team.
The Class Designer in Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Architects gives users a design surface to design, view, and refactor classes in a Visual Studio project.
Now cleaning all those unwanted intermediate files out of your solution is a one-click operation.
Work items from the IBM Rational ClearQuest product can be migrated into Team Foundation Server using the CQConverter.exe command line utility.
Publish your ClickOnce application easily to a central location from Visual Studio 2005, and let client machines install it from there.
Installing applications on client machines has never been simpler for users and administrators, thanks to the ClickOnce installation technology introduced in Visual Studio 2005.
Quickly create a Web site for your club while learning about the new membership and role management systems in ASP .NET 2.0.
In Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server, check-in policies can be used to ensure that code passes code analysis checks before being checked-in, making it easier to maintain the quality of code during the development process.
When running a build using Team Foundation Build, code coverage (or code churn) calculations are done as part of the build process.
Code coverage provides developers and testers with information about what code is touched when a test is run.
The Code Coverage Details report in Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server allows development teams to see what percentage of the code in an application is being changed in each build.
View in one place the source code of any type you click on with the new Code Definition window in Visual C++ and Visual C#.
Performance problems are notoriously hard to find. The Code Profiler that is part of Visual Studio Team System enables you to investigate the performance characteristics of your application; and it organizes the data it captures in an easy-to-understand format.
The Allocations View shows all of the .NET types that were created by your application; the number of instances of these types and their memory consumption are also recorded.
The Sampling method of profiling offered by Visual Studio Team System can be applied to a running process as easily as one that Visual Studio Team System launches on its own.
The Call Tree View is an aggregated, hierarchical view of all the functions executed by your application.
Understanding how methods call other methods is an important aspect of any performance investigation. The Caller/Callee View in Visual Studio Team System helps you to investigate these relationships quickly and easily.
Visual Studio Team System helps you collect ETW event data from a number of different providers – Windows, ASP .NET, and IIS are some examples.
The command line tools in Visual Studio Team System focused on performance data collection are available to fulfill a number of scenarios.
All of the performance data collected by Visual Studio Team System can be exported as XML or Excel documents.
Even the smallest software project typically makes use of other software libraries. This is usually the case in C/C++ applications, and definitely the case in .NET applications. The Code Profiler in Visual Studio Team System uses the Functions View to help you sort between the code you have written and the library code that you are using.
Visual Studio Team System integrates with your Team Project to enable you to automatically create a bug, task or other work item type.
Sometimes to find a problem with your code, it is important to be able to slice your performance data in many ways. For example, when looking at a method that allocated a number of String objects, it can be useful to see what called that method. Visual Studio Team System supports this scenario and many others by linking its Views together.
Working with and/or developing native C/C++ code alongside your .NET code is a reality for many software developers. In many cases, the performance bottlenecks that you are looking for exist near those transitions. Visual Studio Team System helps you find these issues by supporting seamless code profiling across native C/C++ and .NET call stacks.
The Object Lifetimes View is an aggregated, hierarchical view of all the functions executed by your application.
The data that Visual Studio Team System collects from the on-chip performance counters describes how your code behaves at its lowest level – literally how the machine code is performing.
Investigating an application for performance issues usually begins with configuring that particular application, or its host, to support this type of investigation. ASP .NET, Windows Services, and native C/C++ code for example, all have unique configuration needs. Visual Studio Team System hides all of this complexity within the Performance Wizard.
The Heisenberg Principle describes a system in which the observation or measurement of an event changes the event. The Sampling feature in Visual Studio Team System is an innovative way of enabling you to measure the performance of your software, yet minimize the impact you are having by taking this measurement.
One of the hardest things to do when investigating a performance issue is trying to wade through all of the data that is collected. The Visual Studio Team System Code Profiler addresses this by processing all of the collected data and organizing it into a Summary View.
When you have spotted a suspicious method, Visual Studio Team System gives you a quick way to go right to its associated source code.
To optimize your application’s performance, sometimes you want to know exactly how long a method is taking to execute. Visual Studio Team System offers Instrumentation to allow you to measure exactly that.
Now you have a new way to efficiently re-use code that has already been written by inserting code snippets, a new Intellisense feature in Visual Studio 2005.
Now you can search across the best sites on the Web for expertise on developing applications on the Microsoft platform, right from within Visual Studio 2005 Help.
You can incorporate COM components into your .NET Framework application by using COM interop tools to import the relevant COM types.
Visual Studio 2005 includes a command prompt test utility, MSTest.exe. This utility allows all types of tests- except manual tests- to be run from a command prompt.
Using vcbuild.exe, you can automate your .sln and .vcproj builds.
Quickly find and download the code you need from MSDN and the Codezone community using the new community download feature in Visual Studio 2005.
Team Foundation Server does a lot of work to categorize the history that it keeps for each file it manages.
Dynamic compilation of common file types is performed by build providers included in ASP .NET 2.0, and you can easily add support for additional file extensions.
Now you can compress your streaming data using the new compression API in the .NET Framework 2.0.
Visual Studio 2005 make it easier for you to determine and set the minimum security permissions your ClickOnce application needs, and to debug your application with exactly those permissions.
The configuration API for ASP .NET developers begins with the WebConfigurationManager class in the System.Web.Configuration namespace.
Visual Studio Team System allows you avoid hard-coding database connection strings into ASP .NET pages. All data connection dialogs and wizards provides the option of storing database connection strings in an application's Web.Config file.
The whole process of laying out controls on the page has been simplified dramatically in Visual Studio 2005.
Use this wizard to easily create a Visual Studio 2005 project from application code you already have so you can view, edit, build, and debug your code files using Intellisense and all the other features that make you more productive.
Now you can extend the Visual C++ 2005 project system to support your own external build tools, simply by authoring an XML file that defines custom build rules.
Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server allows teams to extend Team Foundation Server by customizing work item in ways that suit the particular needs of their development environment.
Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server provides a powerful mechanism to customize the development environment for specific software development processes using process templates.
The Team Foundation Server Build engine allows custom build tasks to be written as managed code classes.
Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server allows teams to extend Team Foundation Server by customizing work item in ways that suit the particular needs of their development environment.
Develop a data access layer for your multi-tiered Web application more easily using the WYSIWYG designer in Visual Studio 2005.
You can use the new Data Sources window in your Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office project to drag and drop a data source onto your document and automatically include a control that is bound to the data source.
Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office now allows data to be embedded as XML data islands for server access.
Use the new class of data source controls in ASP .NET 2.0 to easily access and bind to many different types of data sources.
The new Data Sources window manages all your data sources for you in one convenient location.
You can easily bind properties on your forms to application settings in Visual Studio 2005 in order to implement, for example, persistent updates to user preferences.
The best unit tests will test your code against a wide range of conditions and with a wide range of data. Visual Studio Team System makes this easy to do by enabling you to drive your tests with actual data from a data base.
If you are displaying a small grid of read-only values, or if you are enabling a user to edit a table with millions of records, the new DataGridView control is easier to use and much more powerful than DataGrid.
Improved DataTips in Visual Studio 2005 bring you a whole new expandable way to view the contents of variables while debugging, right from your code window.
With the debugger's Display Attributes feature, you can identify the most useful information about a type you've developed and display this information in the debugger.
Save debugging time by changing code while in Break mode.
When viewing STL containers in Watch windows, or just by hover the mouse over the variable, you will only see the useful information not the whole structure’s layout.
The Deployment Designer in Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Architects allows application designs to be validated for deployment within a particular datacenter, identifying possible issues before the deployment begins.
The deployment report in Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Architects provides a view of resources, settings, errors, and warnings associated with a deployment diagram and can be used to evaluate deployment issues and script application settings for deployment.
The Deployment Designer in Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Architects allows application designs to be validated for deployment within a particular datacenter, helping to detect deployment issues prior to deployment.
Test and debug your code on the spot in the Immediate window without having to leave the design environment.
The Dev and QA Work report in Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server allows team members to see how much work is currently assigned to each person on the development team.
Visual Studio 2005 will now perform cleanly for you when you follow the security best practice of logging in to your workstation regularly as a least-privilege user, not an administrator.
Visual C++ developers no longer need to use different tools to develop for desktops and for smart devices. With Visual Studio 2005, you can use the same tools and methods for SmartPhone and Pocket PC development as for desktop and Web-based projects.
To properly test an application, it may be necessary to see how it performs under a heavy load. With Visual Studio 2005, you can do this by using distributed remote load testing.
The domain-specific language tools in Visual Studio 2005 are a set of tools to assist in creating a software factory to quickly and efficiently develop a specific type of application.
What does it take to create a Web page that dynamically displays information from a database? Just drag and drop ASP .NET 2.0 controls.
Deploying and versioning your Office solution is easier now that the Publish Wizard in uses application and deployment manifests to deploy and update solutions.
Docking your windows where you want them is faster and easier in Visual Studio 2005, thanks to docking guides that show you exactly where the window you are dragging is about to land.
You will find the new Help Search is easier to filter, easier to use, and more accurate in Visual Studio 2005.
The IDE offers improved support for users moving from Emacs or Brief editors by providing a remapping of the keyboard shortcuts and editor behavior as close to these editors’ shortcuts as possible to allow a better experience during the transition.
You can more easily control more Visual C# build settings in the Project Designer of Visual Studio 2005.
Device emulators are testing environments that simulate specific devices. Emulators run on the developer's PC, so that testing can be performed without the device.
An event is a message sent by an object to signal the occurrence of an action. The action could be caused by user interaction, such as a key press; or it could be triggered by some other program logic.
When an exception occurs in the debugger, the new Exception Assistant helps you identify and remedy the problem quickly.
If you write your custom error pages using mobile controls, ASP .NET can be configured to format the error page appropriately for the different mobile devices that it supports.
The Exit Criteria Status report in Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server allows development teams to view the status of important milestones towards a completed application.
In addition to using predefined or downloaded templates, you can also create new templates from projects you have open in Visual Studio 2005.
The new expression handlers in ASP .NET 2.0 simplify the job of substituting values into a page depending on conditions at the time the page runs.
Almost all software today is global – either developed globally, used globally or both. Team Foundation Server recognizes this and provides you with the ability to set the encoding type of files that it manages under version control.
Every file that Team Foundation Server manages has a full history associated with it.
Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server uses file level security to protect intellectual property and control which actions team members can carry out.
File locking freezes the server version of a file so that a developer can edit and check the file in from their local workspace without being forced to resolve any merge conflicts.
You can create a full-featured Web site in any folder you like with Visual Studio 2005.
Just right-click to Find All References to a class or member in your code.
The Bug Rates report in Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server gives development teams a view of the rates at which bugs are being activated and resolved in a development project.
If you need to write code that targets a particular browser or HTML standard, Visual Studio 2005 makes it easy.
It’s easy to make your code look like your own with all the new formatting options in Visual Studio 2005.
Now you can easily deploy and manage a Web site on a remote server using FTP.
Generic tests provide a simple mechanism to extend Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Testers to include custom tests and third party tools within the regular testing environment.
Sometimes it makes sense to look at the history of a file or set of files based on date.
Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server global lists help you keep your development efforts in synchronization with organization-wide data.
If your mobile application will be used by people speaking more than one language, or from more than one culture, build it with localization in mind. Globalization adds support for input, display, and output of a defined set of language scripts that relate to specific geographic areas.
Now you can easily view reflected source code for compiled objects that have no source code available in your project.
Health monitoring is the process of identifying the conditions that contribute to system failure and taking preventive action to keep failures from occurring or recurring.
Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server keeps comprehensive historical information for every file under source control. Users can view this information and use it to monitor changes or compare versions.
Looking for no-nonsense instructions and examples of how to perform a particular task in a particular language? The new How Do I page has the information you need, categorized and convenient.
Now you can control how code generated by Visual Studio 2005 should be formatted.
Visual Studio 2005 respects your HTML. Format your HTML code any way you like, and count on Visual Studio 2005 not to change it.
Make your application look its best with the huge new collection of icons and other images now included in Visual Studio 2005.
Internet Information Services (IIS) settings import allows an application design in the Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Architects Application Designer to use settings imported from a live IIS server rather than manually configured settings.
You can now edit templates for complex controls much more easily in the designer view of Visual Studio 2005.
The Insert Table dialog has been improved to allow you more control over table features while adding it to the design surface.
Develop and deploy InfoPath forms using managed code in Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office.
For a type in the view, it displays the base types from which the type is derived (in "Base Types") and a list of the other types that are deriving from the selected type (in "Derived Types").
Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Build includes the ability to perform code analysis on development projects at build time.
In order to help development teams write quality code, integrated code analysis in Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server test code for poor programming practices and common security risks.
Quickly create a Web site for your club while learning about the new membership and role management systems in ASP .NET 2.0.
Integrated testing allows verification tests to be run automatically during the build process.
Help yourself and your team mates interpret tests by associating them with your project structure and milestones.
The IntelliSense feature has been expanded in Visual Studio 2005 to help you complete all kinds of web development tasks more quickly and easily.
IntelliSense is the technology that pops up context-sensitive hints and options while you are coding, and now while you are debugging as well.
Simplify your debugging experience by choosing to ignore third party code and debug just your own code in Visual Studio 2005.
A label is a name attached to a selection of files and folder versions under source control in Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server.
Live Browsing allows the user to browse definitions and references without the need to create browsing files at build time.
Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Testers provides the ability to test how an application performs under different types of load using automated load tests.
Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Testers provides the ability to test how a Web application performs under different types of load, including a mix of Web browser types.
Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Testers provides the ability to simulate traffic from multiple IP addresses during a load test.
Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Testers provides the ability to test how an application performs under different types of load, including a mix of network connection types.
Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Testers provides the ability to gather and store detailed information about how an application performs under different types of load.
Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Testers provides the ability to gather information about how an application performs under different types of load, including tracing the performance of SQL queries.
Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Testers provides the ability see how a Web application behaves under a simulated user load, including the ability to factor in think times.
Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Testers provides the ability to test how an application performs under different types of load, including the ability to gather Windows performance counter data form the server where the test is being run.
If your project works with an IIS Web server, Visual Studio 2005 makes managing your project much easier.
Localization is the process of translating your application for a given culture or locale. The process consists primarily of translating the user interface into the local vernacular.
The new Logical Datacenter Designer in Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Architects provides a design surface where users can visualize the logical structure of their datacenter and use it to validate applications for deployment.
Manual testing in Visual Studio 2005 allows activities that cannot easily be automated, such as UI testing, collecting metrics, and code coverage, to be fully integrated into the testing process.
Master Pages are templates you can create to control the look and feel of your content pages.
The Message Queuing (MSMQ) service in Microsoft® Windows® CE .NET makes it possible to send messages asynchronously to other devices, across networks or the Internet, even when the other device is temporarily offline.
The ASP .NET Visual Studio Team System Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Admin tool provides administrators with an easy-to-use interface for changing connection strings on servers.
SQL Server Mobile replaces SQL Server CE as the compact database designed for smart devices.
People use all kinds of mobile devices today to access the internet, and it may be important for your Web site to offer each visitor an optimal experience no matter what screen size, bandwidth, or browser they are using.
Team Foundation Server enables you to move assets from one part of the version control structure to another.
Create a database program to organize your movie collection and learn about calling XML Web services in ASP .NET 2.0.
Sometimes the best solution to your problem has already been discovered by someone else in the developer community. Now you can search community sites and interact with other developers right in Visual Studio 2005 to obtain answers to your questions.
Team Foundation Server leverages the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) Agile development model in a process template that teams can use to help guide their development.
Multi-platform support enables developers to target not only x86 but also IA64 and x64 from any x86 building environment.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server allows code files to be checked out by multiple people at the same time, if desired.
The build system allows execution of more than one build at the same time if the machine has more than one processor by sending each build request to a different processor.
The My Bugs report in Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server gives users the ability to see bugs assigned to them at a glance.
Visual Studio 2005 includes full support for developing mobile device applications using C/C++. By using Visual Studio 2005, device developers automatically have access to the wide variety of productivity features like Intellisense, integrated testing, access to the rich set of Team System features, and much more.
Windows Mobile software provides networking and communications capabilities that enable devices to connect and communicate with other devices and people over both wireless and wired networks.
ASP .NET contains a number of new controls for creating fully-featured, interactive Web pages that are viewable on a number of mobile devices. The ASP .NET 2.0 System.Web.Mobile namespace is devoted specifically to mobile Web development.
A nullable variable type is a structure that combines a variable type with a flag to indicate if the value of the field is unknown, or null. Visual Design Studio provides complete and integrated support for nullability across all types of variables, even value types. Nullable types are indicated by adding a "?" behind another variable type (for example, int?).
The Data Sources Window is a new tool window that displays selected objects within your project that you can use to create data bound forms. Simply drag and drop your business objects onto form controls to bind them.
Now you can create custom business objects and use them as data sources to more easily create powerful 3-layer Web applications with less code.
For the first time you can build strongly typed, managed add-ins that you can easily deploy and run under high security settings using Visual Studio 2005 tools for office.
When debugging MPI applications, the Debugger System makes transparent to the user the fact that the application actually executes over multiple machines.
Build yourself a personal Web with photo album while learning about the new master pages and .sitemap files in ASP .NET 2.0.
The Personalization API allows for the persistent storage of structured, user-specific profile information in conjunction with an HTTP module.
In Solution Explorer users can switch between the project view and the physical directory view.
When it comes to the version control system, branches are easy to create; it is merging the branches back together that can be challenging. Team Foundation Server offers you the ability to easily merge entire branches together, or to merge specific change sets.
Dynamic compilation, or precompilation, of your web pages is an excellent feature of ASP .NET 2.0. Precompilation makes it easy to change an .aspx page, save the page, and request the page in the browser without having to recompile the entire web site.
You can restrict the breakpoints to only being set in certain processes and threads by specifying a conditional expression based on the name or id of the processes or the threads.
Providers can extend the powerful features of Visual Studio Team System by adding their own ASP .NET application services that integrate seamlessly to give complete control over the tools and environment.
From getting started to debugging to deploying, everything about Web projects is streamlined in Visual Studio 2005.
Encapsulation allows you to define a type's field data as private, while providing safe and controlled access to the underlying value using .NET properties.
The Extract Interface feature allows you to select a group of existing type members to create a new interface abstraction.
This feature allows you to define a new method from a selection of code statements.
Generate Method Stub refactoring creates a code place-holder that will be ready for your code when you are ready to define the method.
This refactoring removes a selected argument from the current list of parameters.
This refactoring allows you to rename a code token (method name, field, local variable, etc.) throughout a project.
The Reorder Parameters refactoring provides the developer with a way to easily and automatically change the order of a member’s arguments.
Registration-Free COM is different from traditional COM in that it doesn't require components to be described separately in the system registry. Instead, it stores this information in an XML manifest file located in the same folder as the application.
The registry is a system-wide storage area for information about applications, users, and default system settings. Applications can use registry keys for storing specific information that needs to be preserved after the application is closed, and access that same information when the application is reloaded.
The Bugs by Priority Report correlates the bugs found, fixed and closed per day by priority.
The Builds Report takes information from the build and brings data about each team member’s contribution to the forefront.
Are we working fast enough to meet our deadline? The Project Velocity Report helps you answer this amorphous question with real data.
What's the quality of the software? Are tests being passed? Is code churn high? Are bug rates declining or increasing? The Quality Indicators Report sorts through this data for you to produce the Big Picture about the current quality of your project.
Reactivations of work items that had been marked as complete are the bane of all software developers – this report helps you track reactivations across your entire team.
How much work is on your plate? Are you on target to complete the work you have, or are you falling behind? The Remaining Work Report provides an easy, visual indicator of the answer to these and other questions for your own work items and for the entire team.
How fast can the team go before the quality of their work suffers? The Actual Quality vs. Planned Velocity Report helps to answer this question.
The Unplanned Work Report helps you see the work items you started a project with, and the work items you added after the project began.
Just about any software development methodology will suggest that bugs should be associated with a test.
Create a screensaver that displays live information and learn about RSS parsing and GDI+ techniques.
Visual Studio 2005 searches for hidden text in code files, such as collapsed code regions.
With Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 (VSTO), you can have custom code for each worksheet in your Microsoft Excel solution.
For applications that need to communicate with multiple connected-serial devices, the Windows Mobile Device Emulators available in Visual Studio Team System support configuration of several serial ports.
Developers can extend and implement their own custom server controls based on the ASP .NET control set.
You no longer need to run Word or Excel to access the data contained in Office documents on your server, thanks to the new ServerDocument class in Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office.
Property sheets are collections of property values that can be associated with any number of project configurations.
The Shareware Starter Kit™ (SSK) enables you to integrate important shareware management features into most .NET applications.
Most developers can remember a time when they were in the middle of writing code and they had to put that work aside to focus on something else. Team Foundation Server helps keep your work safe with its shelving feature – you can store your changes on the server in a private branch that is automatically created for you when you need it, and cleaned up when you don’t.
Different controls have different sets of tasks associated with them, common tasks are readily available through Smart Tags.
When you include a rich ASP.NET control in your Web application, there can be a large number of properties to configure for that control.
Source files are the lifeblood of any software project. Team Foundation Server provides a comprehensive view of these important assets with the Source Control Explorer. All of the major features in Team Foundation Server's version control such as branching, setting permissions and managing changes, are accessible here.
Multiple matching source file names cause no confusion for the Visual Studio 2005 debugger, thanks to its new checksum feature.
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Mobile Edition is compact database for rapidly developing applications that extends enterprise data management capabilities to mobile devices. You must use the SQL Server Mobile Edition version if you want to target Smartphones or make use of Visual Studio 2005's new data designer features.
The start page of Visual Studio 2005 is configurable and includes RSS support to keep you up to date with your favorite community feeds.
If you ever need to debug code that uses Standard Template Library (STL) containers, this new feature in Visual Studio 2005 will dramatically improve your ability to visualize the data.
Application domains are created and run inside a process, and provide a unit of isolation for the common language runtime. With the .NET Framework 2.0, you can unload application domains that are not needed.
Always when debugging on different versions of operating systems or different versions of your own application, it is important to rely on good support for symbols in the debugger.
Optimal team development often means sharing files with other members of your team. Team Foundation Server has a non-intrusive safeguard to make sure that you always have a choice of working on the latest version of a file.
When Web pages include complex structures such as multiple nested HTML tables, it is easy to get lost in the source code jumble of nested rows and cells.
Team Foundation Build is your own build-lab in a box! Just choose the Visual Studio solutions that you want to build, and Team Foundation Build will take a snapshot of those solutions, build them, run them through testing and code analysis, and publish the result on a local or remote machine.
Many build system infrastructures help you to easily produce builds of your software; Team Foundation Server takes this a step further by making it just as easy to reproduce any build of your software at any time.
All Visual Studio Team System object models are exposed as .NET assemblies.
Visual Studio Team System can deploy your tests to a remote machine, execute them, and bring back the results. The Deployment Items property allows you to specify any dependencies your test might have.
Any project governed by finite resources and time has to prioritize its work; Visual Studio Team System provides a priority property to enable to you express the relative importance of work items such as tests.
With Visual Studio 2005, software testing tools are integrated into the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) using the new Test Project type. Testers and developers do not need to leave the IDE in order to create and run tests. The project can include tests of any type, including Web, load, and manual tests as well as code coverage.
Tests in Visual Studio Team System can have very rich meta-data associated with them. Everything from who owns the test to what deployment items are required for a test can be captured in this meta-data.
As you create more and more tests in a project, you need the ability to manage these tests. The Test View by default is a simple list of all tests in the solution; however, Visual Studio Team System also supports filtering to help you identify the tests you want.
As you create more tests in a project, you need the ability to manage these tests. Grouping is another way to organize your tests in the Test View. The Test View by default is a simple list of all tests in the solution; however, Visual Studio Team System also supports grouping tests to help you identify the tests you want.
In Visual Studio Team System, work items are crucial building blocks for bringing team members together. Any test created in Visual Studio Team System can be associated with one or more work items; this helps bring traceability and visibility into every bit of work being done on a given project.
Running tests to validate code before it is checked into version control is a recommended practice in most development methodologies. Team Foundation Server makes doing this easy and transparent with its testing check-in policy.
Visual Studio Team System provides the Timeout property to enable you to pass or fail a test based on its time-critical performance.
Now using tracepoints in Visual Studio 2005 you can quickly and easily associate a custom action with any breakpoint.
When a developer uses the undo checkout feature, changes to the code are abandoned, the checkout is cancelled, and the original file is not changed.
Visual Studio Team System makes testing a first-class part of the Visual Studio experience. Nowhere is this more evident than in the unit testing support, built right into the IDE.
Visual Studio Team System helps developers who are writing ASP .NET-based applications to unit test their work, with special attributes that simulate conditions particular to ASP .NET.
Visual Studio Team System offers a comprehensive assertion class to help you validate conditions in your tests.
Data driving your unit tests is a very effective way of making sure your code is robust against a wide range of data values and conditions. The data properties in a Unit Test help you define the data source you use to data-drive your tests, and how that data is retrieved.
Unit testing private and protected methods, properties, and fields is just as important as unit testing the public interface of your project. Visual Studio Team System makes this easy and productive by using a reflection-based approach.
Creating tests is just one aspect of how Visual Studio Team System makes testing a top priority. Visual Studio Team System also helps developers manage the tests that they create. The Test View is one of the ways to do this.
Add new host controls with data-binding capabilities to your Word or Excel project with Visual Studio 2005 Office Tools.
Now you can add Windows Forms controls right into your Excel and Word documents using Visual Studio 2005 Office Tools.
Team Foundation Server can track the versions of files under source control, keep a record of their change history, and support advanced functions like branching, merging, and labeling.
The Source Control Explorer in Team Foundation Server displays a wealth of information about the files it is managing.
The visual designer interface for Microsoft Office integrates the functionality of Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word into the development environment.
If you work with complex types such as datasets and long XML files, you know that these are unwieldy to view in the debugger watch window.
The Visual Studio 2005 managed User Interface (UI) device designer can be described as "what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG). It offers developers a customized design environment for any of the available Windows Mobile device display sizes and orientations, and displays the application exactly as it will appear on the device.
All of the HTML code generated by Visual Studio 2005 can now be validated as XHTML compliant, meeting the W3C standards for XHTML 1.0 transitional, XHTML 1.0 frameset, or XHTML 1.1 markup language.
In Visual C++, when hovering over a managed function-call or object type in the editor, the xml documentation associated to it is extracted from the metadata and is displayed in the tooltip below its definition.