>> New Git features in Visual Studio 2022, PowerToys updates,
and Wordle, all that and more on this episode of The Download.
[MUSIC].
>> Welcome back to The Download.
I'm your host, Christina Warren,
Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft,
and Happy New Year.
I hope that everyone watching at home is having a
terrific 2022 so far keeping safe and healthy.
I've had a couple of weeks off and now I'm refreshed and
recharged and ready to get into the latest dev news,
so let's do this thing.
[MUSIC].
>> First up, since it is the new year,
it's the perfect time to start learning something new.
Over at Microsoft Learn
the Cloud Skills Challenge is back with a new program called
30 Days to Learn It and so you can follow
the registration link in the show notes and
the description and once you sign up,
you can select an area you want to learn more about.
It could be something like Azure AI Fundamentals,
Azure Developer, Power Platform,
Java on Azure, Microsoft Graph,
there are tons of options,
but choose what you would like to learn more about.
Once you do that,
you will have 30 days to complete
some curated Microsoft Learn contents around the topic,
and then once you've completed that challenge,
you will get a shiny badge for your profile,
as well as 50 percent off a certification exam of your choosing.
If you're interested in getting certified,
this is actually a really great program to
check out and as I said,
check out the links in the description
and the show notes down below.
Next up, there are some great new additions happening around
the Git experience in Visual Studio 2022.
Specifically, a version 17 at one preview two.
I've got a blog post linked in
the show notes and the description that lays it all out.
But the TLDR is that the built-in tools for handling Git
are now a lot more robust and easier to
use and if you've used Git in VS code,
it'll look familiar because it works in a similar way,
but this time is for Visual Studio.
Basically, it's going to be much easier to
compare branches, check out a commit,
do multiple people branching and line staging, i.e,
interactive staging, all inside Visual Studio 2022.
It's a lot more intuitive
and I think this will be great for devs who
don't want to have to leave their editor
or even parts with the command line,
every time they want to play with version control.
There are still couple of known issues.
There are also some upcoming features so be sure to check out,
see what I did there?
See. The blog post that I
mentioned for more details and there's also
a link that provides
a survey where you can provide more information for that.
Next, let's talk about one of
my favorite apps, which is PowerToys.
Now PowerToys for people that don't
know is an open source collection of utilities
for Windows 10 and Windows 11 and
it's aimed by Power users hence PowerToys.
The latest release adds two new features and the first one is
called Always On Top mode and when this is enabled,
you basically hit a hot key on a specific window and
then that window will always remain on top of other windows.
This can be really useful for windows that you
don't want to get hidden and then you just hit
that hot key again and it'll act
as normal and you can also customize it
so that it doesn't work in game mode or
with certain apps, awesome stuff.
That's the first thing. But the next feature is a new operator,
which has been added to my favorite PowerToys,
which is PowerToys Run.
PowerToys Run basically is invoked when you hit the Alt Space,
or you can set another hot key if you want and
allows you to more easily source your machine for files,
apps, or invoke commands or processes.
For me personally I've been using like
a similar motif for like 15 years.
Shout out to the Quicksilver OGs.
Anyway, this is a total game changer,
but there's a new operator PowerToys Run.
You just type in question mark,
question mark and then a search query and it'll open up that query
and your default web browser with
your default search engine, so I love it.
You can get PowerToys from GitHub or
the Microsoft Store and I've got a link to
the latest release in the show notes and the description.
Next, I just want to give a quick shout out to my friends,
Kayla Cinnamon and everyone's favorite developer,
Scott Hanselman, and their new show Windows Wednesdays.
So every Wednesday Kayla and
Scott talk about and show off cool Window stuff,
including WCL and Windows Terminal
and I've got a link to the playlist on
YouTube and you can check them out each
week over at the Windows Developer YouTube channel.
[MUSIC].
>> Next up, Net Maui is now at
Preview 11 and it's getting some new features,
including multiple Windows for apps,
there's some updated templates with C-sharp,
there is now alignment across iOS,
Mac OS and tvOS and there's new documentation,
so check it out and the links that
I've got in the show notes in the description.
Next, if you are interested in playing with Azure container apps,
my friend Jay Gordon made a really great video on how to deploy
Azure container apps with
the CICD workflow and it's totally worth checking out.
Really great stuff. Jay and I said certain links are in
the description in the show notes down below. Moving on.
Azure Static Web Apps is
a really great way to deploy your static content in
a robust and reliable way and
there is now an enterprise edge variant in
preview that will make your static web apps enterprise
great thanks to its integration
with Azure Front door and so this will
improve things like page speed and will also allow you to secure
your applications on a globally deployed network
so that no matter where your customers are,
they're getting the best experience and so
I've got a link in the show notes and the description for
more information and documentation on the enterprise grade edge,
Static Web Apps in the show notes the description,
Shara Simone, good work.
Speaking of static sites,
my pal Christian Hileman has
a really great post on his blog on how
you can turn a GitHub page
into a progressive web app, which is really cool.
This is awesome and I've got a link to
Christian's posts in the links down below.
Now it's time for my pick of the week.
If you spend a lot of time on Twitter,
you might have seen people sharing
their scores from the fun Word game Wordle.
Wordle is essentially a clever twist
on a Word guessing game like Lingo,
but with some really fun innovative twists
like the fact that you can only play it once a
day and the fact that you only have six chances to solve the Word.
It was the creation of a software developer,
Josh Wardle, who lives in Brooklyn,
and he built the app for his partner
and get it Wardle, Wordle, it's cool.
Anyway, he released it to the public in November to
just a couple of dozen daily users and as of two weeks ago,
it was getting like 300,000 users a day
and that figure is now in the millions.
There have been lots of clones and
there's lots of discourse around the app
and all that seems to detract
from something that I think is pretty awesome,
which is a project
a software engineer made out of love to share with his partner and
his friends has delighted millions of people
across the globe and to me that
captures the essence of why software development is so
great and why I think the web is such a great platform.
I've got a link to Wordle in the show notes and the description,
as well as a profile on Josh from The New York Times.
It's awesome. Thank you, Josh.
Thank you for Wordle, Wordle is awesome.
That does it for me this week.
Let me know if you are as addicted to
Wordle as I am in the comments down below,
as well as your thoughts on any of our other stories.
If you like this video, go ahead and like it on YouTube.
The dislike counter is broken,
but you can still let us know
your opinions and while you're there,
go ahead and subscribe to Microsoft Developer
for all of your nerd needs. See you next time.
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