In the “Windows Store apps for Absolute Beginners with C#” on Channel9  Bob Tabor from www.LearnVisualStudio.net will teach you the fundamentals of Windows Store app development by walking you through building the Contoso Cookbook Hands On Labs over the course of 34 lessons,

The Hands On Lab manual and source code can be found at: http://corti.ch/contosocookbook

Visual Studio 2012 was announced with the promise of a new approach for providing updates to Visual Studio on a regular cadence of shorter intervals.

The promise is kept by delivering “Update 1” today as a download for all Visual Studio 2012 users.

You can install it today from the download page (see “Visual Studio 2012 Update 1” under the “Additional software” section).

See “Somasegar’s Blog” for many details on Update 1.

The updates contained in Update 1 are summarized as:

Windows development

For the release of Windows 8, Visual Studio 2012 added new templates, designers, and testing & debugging tools to support this new platform, including support for Windows Store apps with the Windows 8 Simulator. Update 1 adds support for mixed-mode (managed/native) debugging of Windows Store apps, and support for native ARM dump debugging. This update also includes code analysis support for Windows Phone 8 apps. But Update 1 isn’t just about new Windows platforms. It also enables you to target Windows XP with native C++ applications in Visual Studio 2012.

SharePoint development

With Update 1, we also invested in expanding our lifecycle tools for SharePoint 2010, especially for testing and quality assurance. You can now use unit tests and coded UI tests for simulating user interaction, including the Microsoft Fakes Framework to stub out SharePoint dependencies. Load testing support enables stress testing of SharePoint applications under simulated load and network conditions. In addition, you can now capture SharePoint logging information using IntelliTrace to provide a rich analysis experience for SharePoint applications.

Agile teams

Visual Studio 2012 brought a lot of new features to support the work of agile teams. Update 1 builds upon these advancements with significant usability improvements in Team Foundation Server’s web interface and a much improved source viewing and diffing experience. Update 1 also includes functionality for Team Foundation Server that first appeared in Team Foundation Service, such as Kanban support with a Kanban board and a cumulative flow diagram. In the IDE, Code Maps enable you to create and view dynamic visualizations of relevant code to understand and navigate its relationships faster.

Continuous quality

Enabling continuous quality is a key focus area of Update 1. Code coverage for automated tests is now available for manual testing, which enables you to analyze which areas of a code base are used during manual testing. Update 1 also supports cross-browser testing, with the ability to record web tests in Internet Explorer and then later replay them with most modern browsers. Using Test Explorer, you can group and run tests based on their traits (Test Category, Test Property, Priority, and Owner). You can also pause and resume manual test sessions in Microsoft Test Manager, and automatically create an image log of all actions performed during an exploratory testing session.

When I write code, I basically live off code samples.  They are the best starting point for me to learn a new technology or tackle a development problem I am facing.  They also provide straightforward solutions and helpful references.

In partnership with Visual Studio Product Team and MSDN Samples Gallery Team, Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework releases Sample Browser for Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio 2010 (http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/4934b087-e6cc-44dd-b992-a71f00a2a6df) an effort to evolve the code sample use experience. 

You can search and download 3500+ Microsoft official code samples and community samples, including over 700 Windows 8 samples and more than 1000 All-In-One Code Framework customer-driven code samples.  With its integrated sample search, flexible sample download and more than ten useful features designed for easier access and management of code samples from within Visual Studio, we hope to put the power of tens of thousands of code samples at developers’ fingertips.