Visual Studio is Transforming.

16th April 2015 // View as Webpage // Haven't subscribed yet? Join us! This edition of our newsletter will be all about Visual Studio, our favourite developer tool and service. Visual Studio and Visual Studio Online provide developers and development teams all the tools required to code, work as a team, build, test, and release solutions for consumers and enterprises. As you might know, Visual Studio Online is a hosted service and is always up to date. It allows development teams to easily collaborate and manage software projects so teams can focus on shipping features and fixing bugs. If you haven’t used it before, check out the high level features it offers. If you already use it, the Visual Studio Online and Team Foundation Server feature timelines page is a great resource that includes planned updates. For example, the next version of the Build feature, amongst other updates, will enable cross-platform builds! As the Visual Studio team gets closer to releasing Visual Studio 2015, you can already take it for a spin. In February they released Community Technology Preview 6 with a host of updates. It now supports the Windows 10 Technical Preview tools as well. If you want to check it out, a great option is using your Azure subscription (MSDN or other) to take a look at the Azure Virtual Machine Gallery which has an image with it pre-installed called ‘Visual Studio Ultimate 2015 CTP 6’. Finally, we’ve recently announced that the Visual Studio 2015 product lineup will be simplified down to three offerings: Community (free), Professional, and Enterprise. If you want to learn more about Visual Studio and hear some great announcements from Microsoft for developers don’t forget to check out the Build conference live and on-demand streams at the end of the month, along with all the free developer training on Microsoft Virtual Academy. Additionally, we have Damian Edwards and Scott Hunter from the ASP.NET engineering team at Codemania next week in Auckland. As part of the conference they will also be delivering a workshop on Thursday 23rd in the morning giving attendees a sneak peek into the future of ASP.NET. A few tickets are still available for both the workshop and the conference. Thiago Almeida Technical Evangelist Microsoft New Zealand //build is Coming to Auckland! This is the first time Microsoft is doing a worldwide tour after the //build conference in San Francisco. Join us at //build Auckland on Saturday the 30th of May, to hear about the great developer announcements around Windows 10 and Microsoft Azure. Did we mention that it's free? Registration is open now, sign up today, you can't afford to miss this one! More On Project Spartan, Our New Browser for Windows 10. Project Spartan is available for the first time for Windows Insiders to try out as part of the latest Windows 10 Technical Preview build. Note, it is not yet a polished preview for public release, there will be plenty more features and improvements coming. Take a look at a quick snapshot of some of the cool new features that are available, and let your feedback be known! Visual Studio Product Lineup Officially Announced. The Visual Studio product lineup has been simplified down to three offerings: Community (free), Professional, and Enterprise. Check out the Visual Studio 2015 Product Editions as well for detailed feature and pricing information, including the current promotions that are running so you can get the most value out of Visual Studio today. Windows Library for JavaScript 4.0 (WinJS 4.0) Preview Released. In the previous release, WinJS 3.0, the focus was ensuring cross-browser compatibility. With WinJS 4.0, features have been added to ensure this library continues to be a great framework not only for making Windows apps, but for the web as well. More information is available here, otherwise you can start using WinJS 4.0 Preview today. Node.js Tools 1.0 for Visual Studio is Now Available for Download! It has been announced that Node.js 1.0 for Visual Studio is now available for download. There are a bunch of great new highlights such as code completions, interactive windows, advanced debugging and profiling, project templates, Azure and Git/TFS integration and much more! To top it all off, after high demand, Node.js Tools for Visual Studio is moving to GitHub. So get developing! Have a Windows app project on the side? Show it off! Share it with the rest of the community in the Kiwi Windows Apps Facebook group or send us an email to nzdev\@outlook.com. Weather getting you down? We've got the perfect selection of apps so that you don't have to feel guilty about staying inside this weekend. Treat yourself! How to Rock the Stage! 17th April (AKL) Dr James Whittaker, Distinguished Technical Evangelist for Microsoft, and Dr Michelle Dickinson, winner of the Prime Ministers Science communication prize, will combine their superpowers to deliver an interactive and informative session designed to reveal their secrets behind confident public speaking and killer technical presentations. Microsoft Developer Cloud Essentials. 20th April (WEL), 29th April (AKL) At this DevCamp you will learn about some of the best features and services of Microsoft Azure and how to build and move a variety of apps to the cloud. You will see how to build websites, mobile applications, and enterprise-class applications. Codemania. 24th April (AKL) Codemania is for the passionate software developer. Get inspired by some amazing speakers at the conference, or attend their valuable workshops. There is plenty to see and learn! Ellerslie .NET User Group Meetup 29th April (AKL) We'll be hearing from Julian Simpson whose will be presenting on Neo4J. Neo4J is the worlds leading graph database, and we'll look at how graph dB's like Neo4J can be used. \@defsol will also speak in "The Slot". A lightning talk on testing PowerShell with Pester. He has been writing a lot of PowerShell lately and has come out smiling after successfully writing some tests for the more brittle aspects. Azure Discovery Day 13th May (WEL) Join our featured speaker for a day of Azure Discovery. This session will provide you with an overview of the platform, outline some of the component services available, and describe how the different technologies come together to create solutions to common organisation problems and opportunities through demos, presentations and discussions. Successful developers are always upgrading their skills. Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA) offers online Microsoft training delivered by experts. Watch videos, download PowerPoint slides and test yourself as you learn at absolutely no cost. If you want to learn something different, head over to MVA here! Don't forget, the MVA Lite app is now available, so you can now learn anywhere at anytime! Here are the courses your Microsoft Technical Evangelists recommend this week: Java on Microsoft Azure. Curious about what Microsoft has to offer the Java community? You might be surprised! Join us to explore the latest tools and technologies to help Java developers get in the cloud with Microsoft Azure. A Developer's Guide to Windows 10 Preview. Would you like a preview of the developer tools for Windows 10? If you’ve signed up for the Windows Insider program, get early access and a head start on developing for Windows 10. Plus, you can offer your feedback to help us shape it! Join experts Jerry Nixon and Andy Wigley as they introduce the Windows 10 developer platform, give guidance on developing Windows universal and web apps, and take a look at some of the interesting new features for developers in Windows 10. © 2015 Microsoft Corporation Terms of Use ::: Trademarks Microsoft respects your privacy. To learn more, please read our online Privacy Statement. If you would prefer not to receive this newsletter any longer, click here to unsubscribe. To set your contact preferences for other Microsoft communications click here. The Privacy Officer // Microsoft New Zealand Ltd, PO Box 8070 Symonds St, Auckland 1150, New Zealand