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Bring Some Game To Your Code! A software engineers glory so often goes unnoticed. Attention seems to come either when there are bugs or when the final project ships. But rarely is a developer appreciated for all the nuances and subtleties of a piece of code--and all the heroics it took to write it. With Visual Studio Achievements Beta, your talents are recognized as you perform various coding feats, unlock achievements and earn badges. Learn More About Visual Studio Visual Studio is a powerful tool with tons of features, many of which you may not know about. Earning some of the badges may result in learning about features you didn’t even know existed! Download It <a class="big download button http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/bc7a433b-b594-48d4-bba2-a2f24774d02f Download Now How It Works With the http://channel9.msdn.com/achievements/visualstudio Visual Studio Achievements Extension , achievements are unlocked based on your activity. Your code is analyzed on a background thread each time you compile. In addition, the extension listens for certain events and actions that you may perform in Visual Studio, reporting progress on these events to the server. When you unlock an achievement, Visual Studio lets you know visually with a pop-up: http://files.channel9.msdn.com/thumbnail/5a978ac6-1889-486c-8cef-43060baa8d1c.png" rel="lightbox <img src="http://files.channel9.msdn.com/thumbnail/5a978ac6-1889-486c-8cef-43060baa8d1c.png" alt="pop up Figure 1 - Unlocking An Achievement In addition, your Channel 9 profile is updated with any achievements you earn, recalculating your position on the http://channel9.msdn.com/achievements/visualstudio/leaderboard leaderboard : http://files.channel9.msdn.com/thumbnail/72f66fb0-7787-4b21-861a-af964b967c94.PNG" rel="lightbox <img src="http://files.channel9.msdn.com/thumbnail/72f66fb0-7787-4b21-861a-af964b967c94.PNG" alt="leaderboard" width="670" height="631 Figure 2 - The Visual Studio Achievements Leaderboard Some examples of individual achievements include Regional Manager (have more than 10 regions in a single class), Close To The Metal (use 5 preprocessor directives), Stubby (generate method stubs 10 times) or Interrupting Cow (have 10 breakpoints in a file). All in all, there are 32 achievements awaiting to be unlocked, all of which are listed http://channel9.msdn.com/achievements/visualstudio here . Heres what the 6 different badges look like: <table align="center <tbody><tr><td colspan="3" align="center The Six Categories of Achievements </td></tr><tr><td align="center http://files.ch9.ms/vsachievements/wrench.png" rel="lightbox <img src="http://files.ch9.ms/vsachievements/wrench.png" alt="wrench </td><td align="center http://files.ch9.ms/vsachievements/scissors.png" rel="lightbox <img src="http://files.ch9.ms/vsachievements/scissors.png" alt="scissors </td><td align="center http://files.ch9.ms/vsachievements/broom.png" rel="lightbox <img src="http://files.ch9.ms/vsachievements/broom.png" alt="broom </td></tr><tr><td align="center Customizing Visual Studio </td><td align="center Dont Try This At Home </td><td align="center Good Housekeeping </td></tr><tr><td colspan="3" align="center </td></tr><tr><td align="center http://files.ch9.ms/vsachievements/fun.png" rel="lightbox <img src="http://files.ch9.ms/vsachievements/fun.png" alt="fun </td><td align="center http://files.ch9.ms/vsachievements/powercoder.png" rel="lightbox <img src="http://files.ch9.ms/vsachievements/powercoder.png" alt="power coder </td><td align="center http://files.ch9.ms/vsachievements/unleashing.png" rel="lightbox <img src="http://files.ch9.ms/vsachievements/unleashing.png" alt="unleashing vs </td></tr><tr><td align="center Just For Fun </td><td align="center Power Coder </td><td align="center Unleashing Visual Studio </td></tr></tbody></table> Share Your Flair Each time you earn a badge, a unique page is created with your profile picture, the badge and a description. You can tweet about achievements you earn and/or share them on Facebook: http://files.channel9.msdn.com/thumbnail/54ee8a1e-bbcf-471c-a4cd-24a8c40f6816.PNG" rel="lightbox <img src="http://files.channel9.msdn.com/thumbnail/54ee8a1e-bbcf-471c-a4cd-24a8c40f6816.PNG" alt="facebook" width="640" height="268 Figure 3 - Share A Page Or, you can show a list of achievements on your blog using the http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/Visual-Studio-Achievements-Widget Visual Studio Achievements Widget which is as simple as adding one line of script to your page. After all, those badges look so shiny and nice! Heres an example of the widget on a blog: http://files.channel9.msdn.com/thumbnail/85542b84-605d-4b54-a783-c35da8b87207.PNG" rel="lightbox <img src="http://files.channel9.msdn.com/thumbnail/85542b84-605d-4b54-a783-c35da8b87207.PNG" alt="blog" width="650" height="743 Figure 4 - The Visual Studio Achievements Widget On A Blog The widget uses our http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/Visual-Studio-Achievements-API Visual Studio Achievements public API , which you are welcome to access to create your own mashups and apps. Genesis We have to give props to the blog While True , whose blog post http://blog.whiletrue.com/2011/01/what-if-visual-studio-had-achievements/ What If Visual Studio Had Achievements inspired us to go build this. That post spawned a http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/f8phd/what_if_visual_studio_had_achievements/ reddit post that is the thread which started it all! Feedback Were just getting started with Visual Studio Achievements and are hoping to release more in the future. If you have ideas for additional achievements, wed love to hear about them. Please use the http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/bc7a433b-b594-48d4-bba2-a2f24774d02f Q&A section of the achievements extension to make suggestions for future achievements. And if you have suggestions, concerns, issues or problems, again, use the http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/bc7a433b-b594-48d4-bba2-a2f24774d02f Q&A section of the achievements gallery page. Give a read to the http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/Visual-Studio-Achievements-FAQ FAQ as well as your question may already be answered. <a class="big button download http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/bc7a433b-b594-48d4-bba2-a2f24774d02f Download Now <img src="http://m.webtrends.com/dcs1wotjh10000w0irc493s0e_6x1g/njs.gif?dcssip=channel9.msdn.com&dcsuri=http://channel9.msdn.com/Feeds/RSS&WT.dl=0&WT.entryid=Entry:RSSView:ed819fb895b249a2adab9fb00158ca0e
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