Ibrahim Hamza briefed us this morning, talked about the Visual Studio 2012 launch, and also explained briefly what’s new in the version. He reminded us about current IT Trends, that is all about consumerisation and business agility (to be competitive, innovative).
Modern Apps according to Ibrahim must be:
- User-Centric: access information from a variety of different sources with different devices, but with the same constant experience
- Social
- Data-Centric: Make it easier to connect data to these variety of devices
Visual Studio allows you to build applications that connect to assets on the cloud or private datacenters. At one side, we have the business side that defines the problem & requirements, developers that develop the codes, and operations (users that operate the software). These are no easy barriers (to make sure they communicate to each other well) but Ibrahim emphasizes that Microsoft has managed to help connecting these together through Visual Studio 2012.
Alex Knight from xamling
From a Designer Prospective
xamling develops the SBS OnDemand app (among other apps), which is available in the marketplace. Using the Visual Studio tools (such as preset templates) from Microsoft, Alex explained how useful they are to create applications and help him with his projects. What’s important for Alex is the fact that developers and designers can now work together in parallel. They can then make bigger and better apps thanks to Visual Studio.
Dave Mendlen from DevExpress
According to Dave, the Ecosystem is what makes Visual Studio shine. Microsoft gives a wonderful platform and set of tools to DevExpress to be successful in the market, to create great, modern apps.
Chris Birmele, Technical Solutions Professional from Microsoft
Chris came on stage to tell us some of the good things in Visual Studio 2012, such as:
- PowerPoint prototyping
To make sure that we capture the right requirements, using PowerPoint as a prototyping tool. - Business User Feedback
After the prototyping process, it’s important to capture users’ feedback constantly to make sure that the requirements are met. The Business User Feedback tool can capture screenshots, insert audio, and more. Developers can then look at the feedback inside Visual Studio through Team Foundation Server to amend or update their prototypes. - Productivity Improvements
Sometimes developers have to be pulled to go to different projects, which can be “expensive” to the project. In Visual Studio, you can “suspend” the project through Team Foundation Server and come back to it later. There are also more stuffs to drill in. - New Testing Framework
Supported frameworks: MSUnit, Xunit, Nunit, C++, JavaScript. - SCRUM Project Management
You can see a Windows 8 look-and-feel live tiles to see live status of your project, activities, members (individual developers), deadlines, and other stats. They are also updated instantly so you can manage your project and allocate team members as necessary.
Rocky Heckman, Technical Evangelist from Microsoft
Rocky explained how relevant Cloud is nowadays and therefore, it’s important to make sure that developers can do their development productively (allowing developers to write the codes that only they can write without re-inventing the wheel).
With all these multiple devices in different platforms, Visual Studio 2012 makes device independent delivery of cloud based services possible through Cloud Based Services and UI client, developed from Visual Studio 2012. Every developer can now create globally deployed services on a wide range of devices. It does not matter whether you are an individual developer or working for a big corporate software development company, everyone has the same access to the powerful resources in the cloud.
Don’t forget that you are able to download and use Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop as well for free. This enables developers to get started on building Windows desktop applications quickly. Until you ready to fully utilise the premium version, of course.
Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 Launch
Update – All Microsoft TechEd Australia 2012 coverage posts:
- TechEd Australia 2012 Day 1 coverage
- TechEd Australia 2012 Day 2 coverage
- TechEd Australia 2012 Day 2 – Windows Server 2012
- TechEd Australia 2012 Day 3 coverage
- TechEd Australia 2012 Day 3 – Visual Studio 2012
- TechEd Australia 2012 Day 4 – Modern Office on touch-screen tablets
- TechEd Australia 2012 Day 4 – Windows To Go
- TechEd Australia 2012 Day 4 – Other sessions coverage
Disclosure: I’m invited and sponsored by Microsoft to cover TechEd Australia 2012. Photos taken from Life@Microsoft Australia
