Use this macro to generate backups from Microsoft Visual Studio solution's context menu

Earlier this week, Microsoft released Visual Studio 2010. This article, by Scott Mitchell, looks at several new and exciting features in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.

This article presents some of the changes in Visual Studio 2010 for Visual C++, focusing on new the build system (MSBuild), multi-targeting, IntelliSense and browsing experience.

Microsoft-sponsored open source foundation names a new permanent board of directors as the effort aims to grow beyond its roots.

Learn about the Microsoft Automatic Graph Layout using a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) sample application.

This article compares the performance of using a Web Service proxy class created by Visual Studio vs. a custom created class.

In this article you'll explore the notable features of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional Edition.

After being delayed once, will the next edition of the popular developers' suite make its April ship date?

After delaying rollout plans for March, Microsoft reschedules.

Developer feedback extends beta for quality reasons.

Demonstrates the basics of writing a Windows Debugger.

Find out the answer according to Jason Zander, General Manager of Visual Studio.

Explore how to let your applications bind to the most recent version of the Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Libraries.

Learn about an add-in to automatically increment the FileVersion and ProductVersion fields in your application's files.

Despite the best documentation, stepping into the actual source code of third-party libraries can be the fastest way to diagnose a difficult bug or determine the state that a component needs to be in before a certain operation can be completed. With a little set-up magic, developers can step into libraries quickly and easily.

Thread debugging can be one of the more difficult debugging exercises for a Visual C++ developer. The Visual Studio 2008 debugger contains a number of improvements that make thread debugging more productive, enabling code issues in multi-threaded applications to be identified and remedied faster.

Effective use of the Visual C++ debugger is one of the easiest ways to increase developer productivity. Program database (PDB) files are one of the key elements in effectively debugging an application, and it is easy to set up Visual Studio to use debug symbols for binary files produced by other developers, including those at Microsoft.

Code is run in a debugger for two main reasons: examining the branches of code that are being executed, and examining data values to determine why the code is behaving in a certain manner. Inspecting data values can be significantly improved by customizing the debug information. See how that can be done in the Visual C++ debugger.

Discover a way to write add-ins such that a single binary can be hosted across multiple versions of DevStudio, Visual Studio, and Office. It uses C++ & ATL, but the principles should carry over to other languages and frameworks.

For large and complex applications, dealing with the amount of data collected can be difficult. See how the Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) Developer Edition Profiler can do an excellent job of finding performance problems by simply pointing it at an application and allowing it to collect data.

Learn about a dissasembly view of function calls, and decipher the __thiscall calling convention.

Explore a dissasembly view of function calls, including organization of the stack for local variables and the concept of stack frames and frame pointers.

Applications with great performance are a hallmark of C++ programming, and one of the best tools for achieving great application performance is a code profiler. Take a look at the Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) profiler, and see how it can be used to find code bottlenecks and improve performance.

Switch quickly between "cpp" and "h" C++ files. Two macros are given, one for finding quickly just in the current project and another to find in the solution.

Read a dissasembly view of function calls, explaining organization of the stack and the behavior in the context of different calling conventions.

This is a Version Number Build Tool for Automatic Version Numbering after each build in the Visual Studio Environment.

The release of Visual Studio 2008 brings support for using the Visual Studio Class Designer with Visual C++ projects. Look at the differences in how the Class Designer works with C++ compared to purely managed languages, and learn about the range of functionality available to C++ developers.

Are you having problems setting up a TableAdapter that can be fed from stored procedures instead of base tables? Here is a road map to guide you to success.

Learn how to compile and integrate Crypto++ into the Microsoft Visual C++ environment.

Protect Software with Product Keys based on the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).

Read a tutorial for writing a Visual C++, HTML-based wizard that generates a simple Win32 console-based customized application.

The application verification features in VSTS Developer Edition help identify errors that are detectable only when an application is running.

Learn how to set up and use the Microsoft Symbol Server to help you debug applications under Windows.

Learn to comment a function in view of all variants of its definition. You simply comment multiple lines of C/C++ code.

While Visual Studio Team System cannot resolve the two intrinsic C++ unit-testing problems (cultural issues related to agile programming and lack of metadata in native C++), it does deliver a polished unit-testing framework for C++.

Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) code annotations enable C++ developers to attach metadata to a method's parameters to explicitly define the correct usage of the method.

Debugger visualizers allow you to provide a custom user interface for the display of particular classes of data when your program is in debug mode. While there are some complex use cases for this, you can actually derive considerable benefit from very simple debugger visualizers—ones that take ten minutes or less to build.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005: Why Be Bothered with It?

Discover a tool that displays run-time debug information for MFC applications.

Explore the new features of IntelliSense code snippet technology in Visual Studio 2005, and you'll have a nice library of your own snippets in no time.

Learn how to use MS VC++ as a spellchecker while programming by making excessive use of the user-defined keyword feature.

"Profile" a block of C++ code with just one include file and two variable definitions.

To prove that the Microsoft Foundation Class library is not dying, Microsoft has made some changes. Explore what is new and changed in MFC 8, coming with Visual C++ 2005.

This final installment wraps up the coverage of what's new in the IDE with a look at Tracepoints, new project types, enhancements to the Server Explorer, and new functionality for creating C++ projects.

The Visual C++ 2005 IDE team made two painful cuts in Beta 2 related to the Class Designer and IDE Click Once support. Read up on these significant changes and find out how C++/CLI programmers can still take advantage of ClickOnce to deploy their applications.

MSBuild is one of the major new features in Visual Studio .NET 2005. Discover the motivation for MSBuild, how it works, and how Visual C++ developers can get their hands on it.

A "how to" guide for creating a custom C++ appwizard using the IDTWizard interface.

An easy-to-use tool to find the description of various error codes, especially the ones returned by Platform SDK APIs, but also extendable for application-specific codes.

Improvements to the IDE are one of the givens in any new release of Visual C++; hence, they are often overlooked. Take a closer look at some of the new features that the Visual C++ 2005 IDE delivers.

Learn about a simple class that shows you how to center text vertically in a single-line edit control.