After going through the process of fine tuning and improving thanks to twelve months of preview builds, Microsoft has officially launched the latest version of its Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) about a week before Windows 10 is released to public. After taking onboard comments from users over the last year, a time period that also included a release candidate, Microsoft feels it has sufficiently improved the Visual Studio IDE enough to release to the public alongside an update to its .NET framework.

To pile on to today’s barrage of news and beta software releases – in case you’ve been living under a rock, I’m referring to the release of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview and Windows Server 8 beta – Microsoft has also released the Visual Studio 11 Beta with .NET 4.5 Beta for download.

Microsoft today has announced the general availability of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4. In a press release today, the company announced that VS2010 and the new .NET Framework 4 will be available for developers after the launch event which is taking place in Las Vegas today. The final version of Silverlight 4 will also be available later this week.

Just found out this Visual Studio 2010 theme for Windows 7 and thought I should share it with you all. This theme includes 3 VS2010 wallpapers (wish they were widescreen), and has been put together by Rob Caron for all the .NET devs out there.

Microsoft today at the MIX10 conference has rolled out Release Candidate version of Silverlight 4, along with tons of other tools like Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone, Windows Phone 7 Series add-in to use with Visual Studio 2010 RC, XNA Game Studio 4.0, Windows Phone 7 Series Emulator for application testing, and Expression Blend for Windows Phone Community Technology Preview. It was announced by Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President of the .NET Developer Platform in his keynote today at MIX10, held at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas.

Microsoft today has released an update to its Software Development Kit (SDK) for the most popular social networking site, Facebook. With Microsoft SDK for Facebook Platform 3.0, developers can build rich Facebook applications using Silverlight, WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation), ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC and Windows Forms. The SDK contains samples, controls, templates, and help documentation for implementing a simple Facebook Connect functionality, to a fully functional desktop, mobile or a web application. According to a Microsoft spokesperson: “the goal is to enable .NET developers to quickly and easily leverage the various features of the Facebook Platform.”.

When working with WPF/Silverlight in Blend, it is quite irritating having to actually switch between Visual Studio and Blend throughout the course of the project by opening the project from its folder location again and again. I bet you might have wondered atleast once whether there was a way to open your project in Blend directly through Visual Studio!

Tired of the usual look of your buttons in WPF? Do you want a glossy-looking button with glass shine and glow effect as soon as you move the mouse cursor over the button?
Its just six easy steps away … Follow the tutorial below and give a fresh look to your apps.

Last week, I posted a tutorial on how to save and retrieve images using SQL Server and WPF. This is an extension to that article. In my previous article, the images were displayed in the image box as soon as its name was selected from the list box. In this tutorial the picture will be displayed from the database as soon as you the speak the name of the picture.

Microsoft has finally rolled out the final bits Silverlight 3 along with full version of Expression Studio 3 for creating RIA (Rich Internet Applications). If you haven’t already discovered the new features in Silverlight 3, here is a list of all the new controls, features and functionality that is added within the Silverlight 3.

XNA Game Studio 3.1 is go! and it brings support for the new features in Xbox 360 NXE – Xbox LIVE Avatars, Xbox LIVE Party features, Video playback and more!

Microsoft has introduced a new educational platform which provides rich and interactive learning material for educators. Built upon the Microsoft .NET Framework, the Semblio platform will enable developers to reach new audiences and help create new business opportunities and revenue streams.