We're excited to announce we've implemented such a feature. The idea is that in one place -- your notification feed -- you can see activity for any posts and threads you are following.  For this new feature, you'll notice we've incorporated ideas from other popular social network websites .  Here's how it works:

• All video posts and forum threads now have a follow button next to them.
  
• You can see and manage your notifications from your profile page:
  
  
• Anytime anyone comments on an item you are following, an entry is added to your notification feed, which can be found on your profile page.
  
  
• In addition, you can opt in to receiving emails whenever something is added to your notification feed.
  
  

We think the infrastructure we've built to enable this notification system has a lot of possibilities, such that Channel 9 brings the content you care about directly to you, instead of you having to seek that content out yourself. We're just getting started here and there's more we want to implement, including the following:

• Following shows, so you are notified when a new video has been added to a show
• Following people, so you are notified when there is activity by a person on the site
• Digest emails, so you get one email a day instead of multiple emails
• Giving you the choice to 'auto-follow' any conversation you participate in

We're excited to release this feature and looking forward to your feedback. I can tell you right now: I'm following this post and will be notified as soon as you comment!

For those of you who cannot make the conference, we will be streaming the keynote, select sessions, and live Q&A sessions on Channel 9.  

Update: Build 2013 is officially sold out! You can still watch keynotes, select sessions, & live Q&A online on Channel 9

Features

• Pin your favorite shows and keep up to date with Live Tiles
• Watch videos with your choice of Progressive or Smooth Streaming technology
• Snap our videos to the side and keep watching while doing other things
• Download our videos and watch them offline
• Search Channel 9 content or Share using the Windows 8 Charms

The app is focused on watching video (you won’t see the forums, or even text-only Coding 4 Fun articles in there at the moment), and includes all of our event sessions in addition to our regular videos.

On the roadmap

Our next step is focused on enabling authentication in the app, connecting you to your account on Channel 9, which would let us bring your queue into the app, video ratings, and more.

Looking forward to your feedback!

These new achievements can be earned in JavaScript, C#, VB and C++. Some examples include: I Like To Move It Move It which is earned by using the accelerometer and The Play Is The Thing which is earned by using the AutoPlay contract. You can see a complete list of the nineteen new achievements below.

If you are new to Visual Studio Achievements, check out this post.

Download It

Download Now

If you already have the extension installed, you can update the extension right from the Visual Studio Extension Manager.

Complete List of New Achievements

• BRAVE NEW WORLD (10 points) Run Visual Studio 2012 on Windows 8. Welcome to the future. Learn more.
• Crouching Coder, Hidden Worker (10 points) Use background tasks. Can be earned in Javascript, C#and VB. Learn more about supporting your app with background tasks using JavaScript and HTML. Learn more about supporting your app with background tasks using C#/VB/C++ and XAML.
  
• Did You Bring Enough For The Whole Class (10 points) Support the share target contract. Can be earned in Javascript, C#, C++ and VB. Learn more about receiving shared content in Javascript and HTML. Learn more about receiving shared content in C#/VB/C++ and XAML.
  
• Feed Me (10 points) Consume an RSS/ATOM feed using Syndication APIs. Can be earned in Javascript, C# and VB. Learn more about syndication in Javascript. Learn more about syndication in C#/VB/C++ and XAML.
  
• Fifty Shades Of Data (10 points) Inherit from BindableBase. Can be earned in C# and VB. Learn more about BindableBase.
  
• Finders Keepers (10 points) Use the search contract. Can be earned in Javascript, C#, C++ and VB. Learn more about adding search to an app in Javascript and HTML. Learn more about adding search to an app in C#/VB/C++ and XAML.
  
• First Contact (10 points) Use the contact contract. Can be earned in Javascript, C# and VB. Learn more about managing user contacts using JavaScript and HTML. Learn more about managing user contacts using C#/VB/C++ and XAML.
  
• I Like To Move It Move It (10 points) Use the accelerometer to respond to user movement. Can be earned in Javascript, C# and VB.Learn more about responding to user movement in Javascript and HTML. Learn more about responding to user movement in C#/VB/C++ and XAML.
  
• Knowledge Is Power (10 points) Do a profiling session. Can be earned in Javascript, C#, C++ and VB. Learn more about profiling.
  
• Long Distance Diagnostics (10 points) Do a remote debugging session. Can be earned in Javascript, C#, C++ and VB. Learn more about remote debugging.
  
• Mine! Mine! Mine! (10 points) Register for file associations. Can be earned in Javascript, C#, C++ and VB. Learn more about How to handle file activation using JavaScript and HTML. Learn more about How to handle file activation using C#/VB/C++ and XAML.
  
• Pinch Hitter (10 points) Use the semantic zoom control. Can be earned in Javascript, C# and VB. Learn more about semantic zoom in Javascript and HTML. Learn more about semantic zoom in C#/VB/C++ and XAML.
  
• Say Cheese (10 points) Use the camera settings contract. Can be earned in Javascript, C# and VB. Learn more about capturing a photo or video using the camera dialog using JavaScript and HTML. Learn more about capturing a photo or video using the camera dialog using C#/VB/C++ and XAML.
  
• See Me In 3D (10 points) Use stereoscopic display. Can be earned in C++. See the following code sample for a reference implementation: Direct3D stereoscopic 3D sample.
  
  
• Set It And Forget It (10 points) Use of asynchronous programming patterns. Can be earned in Javascript, C# and VB. Learn more about asynchronous programming in Javascript. Learn more about asynchronous programming in .NET.
  
• The Play Is The Thing (10 points) Use an AutoPlay contract. Can be earned in Javascript, C#, C++ and VB. Learn more about auto-launching with AutoPlay using JavaScript and HTML. Learn more about auto-launching with AutoPlay using C#/VB/C++ and XAML.
  
• Turn Me On (10 points) Use the background audio declaration. Can be earned in Javascript, C#, C++ and VB. Learn more about how to play audio in the background using JavaScript and HTML. Learn more about how to play audio in the background using using C#/VB/C++ and XAML.
  
• Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right (10 points) Support all four rotations. Can be earned in Javascript, C#, C++ and VB. Learn more about guidelines for different rotations.
  
• Would You Like To Play A Game (10 points) Use the game explorer extension. Can be earned in Javascript, C#, C++ and VB. Learn more about creating a game definition file.

• Anders Hejlsberg: Technical Fellow, Developer Divisions, Microsoft
• Anil Dash: CEO & Co-founder, ThinkUp
• Ben Huh: CEO and Founder, The Cheezburger Network
• Bill Gates: Co-founder, Microsoft
• Jeff Atwood: Co-founder, Stack Exchange
• Larry Osterman: Principal Software Design Engineer Windows Runtime Experience Team, Microsoft
• LaSean Smith: Sr. Engagement Manager, Deloitte Digital 
• Matt Mullenweg: Co-founder, WordPress
• Michah Baldwin: CEO, Graphicaly
• Nancy Phan: Director of Mobile Product Management, StumbleUpon
• Nolan Bushnell: Founder, Atari, Inc.
• Tim O'Reilly: CEO and Founder, O'Reilly Media
• Tod Semple: Developer, Plants vs. Zombies
• Tracey Trewin: Partner Director, Developer Division, Microsoft
• Sebastian Thrun: CEO, Udacity

• One acre in size
• Large enough to fit 12 NBA basketball courts or 4 NHL ice surfaces
• Climate controlled

Enjoy this time lapse video of the construction.

Have you built your app yet? To help you get started we've just opened the Windows 8 Area on Channel 9. Right now we have over 85 videos and 17 hours of free developer content. You'll learn how to build beautiful apps and sell them in the Windows Store. 

There's lots of new content for developers to get started, including:

• Introducing Windows 8: Snack-sized introductory videos
• Build your first Windows Store app: Video versions of the step-by-step tutorials at dev.windows.com
• Build a Windows Store Blog Reader app with C#: Video versions of the Blog Reader step-by-step tutorial at dev.windows.com
• Windows Store app for Absolute Beginners with C#: Video versions of the Contoso Cookbook Hands-on labs, designed for Absolute Beginners
• Migrating apps from Windows Phone to Windows 8: Step-by-step video tutorials of migrating a real-world app (Khan Academy) from Windows Phone to Windows 8

We are also working on C++ content, including DirectX games and general Windows Store App development with modern C++. Stay tuned, C++ developers.

Build Conference

Remember to mark your calendars as next week we'll be streaming the Build conference live on Channel 9 Tuesday October 30 - Friday November 2nd with plenty of opportunity for live Q&A! As always, all of the sessions will be recorded and made available on Channel 9 within 24 hours of recording.

Thanks,

Jeff and the Channel 9 team

Khan Academy is a not-for-profit company whose mission is to change education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere. Khan Academy has over 5,000 videos (150MM+ views) on everything from Calculus to Communism and everything in-between. Note, both the Windows Phone and Windows Store Khan Academy apps are 3rd party Khan Academy apps and are not officially endorsed by Khan Academy.

Channel 9 Videos

The five part series is available here

1. Setting Up Your Windows Store App Project
2. Handling Asynchronous Data in Windows Store Apps
3. Binding the Interface in Windows Store apps
4. Custom Styling in Windows Store Apps
5. Features and Contracts in Windows Store Apps

App Screenshots 

Source Code

The full source code is also available for both apps to help developers learn how to migrate their apps.

• Khan Academy for Windows Phone
• Khan Academy for Windows Store

Today's an especially great day to be a developer. We're very excited to announce the last significant milestone in the rollout of the Windows Store before the general availability of Windows 8 on October 26. The Store is now open for app submissions from all developers – individuals and companies – in our supported markets, and we've added 82 more app submission markets! Now, developers from 120 markets can publish Windows Store apps. -- Antoine

The post goes on to point out some great deals, including:

All eligible MSDN subscribers receive a free, one-year Windows Store developer account as part of their MSDN benefits. (Eligible subscriptions include Visual Studio Professional, Test Professional, Premium, Ultimate, and BizSpark.) We have a program for students—DreamSpark—that similarly waives the subscription fee. And we have an offer for businesses in our BizSpark program, as well.

Check out their post for more info, or head right over to the site to sign up

For example, if you don’t know how to copy a file in JavaScript or C++, just right-click, select Insert Snippet, select the code snippet, and it will automatically add the code to your Windows app as shown in the screenshots below.

Download It

Download Now

Please see the following pages to learn how to install the snippets and how to use them.

• Installation
• See the full list of Snippets

Screenshots

After installing, right-click and select Insert Snippet...and select the snippet from the list. Then press Tab to jump between fields.

Feedback

Give them a try and let us know what you think!

Interested in getting better at using Windows 8? Then check out a new series called Windows 8 Tips, with a short video on keyboard shortcuts as its premier episode!

Download It

Download Now

With this version of the extension installed, you can also earn any of the 47 other achievements all from Visual Studio 2012 RC on either Windows 8 or an earlier version of the OS.

Note that the Visual Studio Achievements Extension for Visual Studio 2012 RC is a different binary.  This is because the extension has a dependency on the FxCopSdk.dll that ships with Visual Studio and the FxCopSdk.dll is not binary compatible between versions of Visual Studio.

Tech Ed North America 2012 just took place in Orlando, Florida on June 11-14th and you can view all 427 Tech Ed North America sessions now! They are published on Channel 9 under the events section. We also have all Channel 9 Live sessions up and on demand.

If you missed Tech Ed North America it's not too late to book your trip to Tech Ed Europe 2012 in Amsterdam for June 26-29th. See you all there!

Best,

C9 Team  

Here's a screenshot of the UI that shows up when you hover over a user on Channel 9:

This new UI surfaces more than just their MSDN reputation though; it also brings up the user's Channel 9 stats and Visual Studio Achievements, perfect for the active community member who wants to show off his points.

We've already linked all users who have a corresponding profile on MSDN and we do this lookup for all new users, but if anyone wants to opt-out that is as easy as a quick click in their own 'hover box' or on their profile page.

Check it out for yourself in any Channel 9 forum thread, or in the comments on any videos.

In January, we released Visual Studio Achievements to the delight of the developer community -- 80,000+ downloads and counting!  With cloud computing being all the rage these days, we thought it made sense to cook up some achievements for Windows Azure. As such, we are excited to announce an update to the extension which includes fifteen new achievements, all focused on exercising features of Windows Azure.

There are 15 new Azure achievements, such as publishing to Windows Azure from Visual Studio (Heading into the Cloud), using page blobs (Attack of the Blob), using SQL Azure (Database Darling) and configuring start up tasks (It's My Party).

Download It

Download Now

Using Windows Azure

If you aren't using Windows Azure yet, now's a great time to start. If you are an MSDN subscriber, a Microsoft partner or a BizSpark member, this is a chance to use your free Azure benefits (up to $3,700 dollar a year!). If you aren't a member of one of these programs, you can sign up for a free three month trial.

Once you are signed up, you'll need to download the Windows Azure Tools For Visual Studio (from November 2011, also known at the 1.6 SDK). To learn more about developing Windows Azure solutions for .NET, check out all the great tutorials, how-to guides, training kits and other resources in the .NET Azure portal page.

Two of the achievements (Phone in the Cloud and Game in the Cloud) require the use of the most excellent Windows Azure toolkits, which can be found here and here respectively.

Visual Studio Achievements

If you aren't familiar with Visual Studio Achievements, check out the video below, which should give you a quick overview of what Visual Studio Achievements are in 60 seconds:

The New Achievements

The 15 new achievements can be found on the Visual Studio Achievements homepage (scroll down to see them) with links to documentation about learning more.   You can also find the complete list below.  Happy coding and have fun!

Unleashing  Windows Azure

Database Darling (5 points) Use SQL Azure. Learn more about SQL Azure.

Desktop Debutante (5 points) Configure Azure for Remote Desktop Connection. Learn more about using Remote Desktop Connection with Azure.

Get On The Bus (5 points) Use the service bus. Learn more about the Windows Azure Service Bus.

Heading Into The Cloud (5 points) Publish to the cloud from Visual Studio. Learn more about publishing to Windows Azure from Visual Studio.

IntelliTrace Rocks (5 points) Configure Azure to use IntelliTrace. Learn more about using IntelliTrace with Azure.

It's My Party (5 points) Configure Azure to use a start up tasks. Learn more about using start up tasks with Azure.

Keep Heading Into The Cloud (5 points) Publish to the cloud from Visual Studio 10 times. Learn more about publishing to Windows Azure from Visual Studio.

Performance Power (5 points) Configure Azure to use performance profiling. Learn more about using the Performance Profiler with Azure.

Show Me The Cache (5 points) Use Windows Azure Caching. Learn more about Windows Azure Caching.

Union Jack (5 points) Configure Azure to use a worker role. Learn more about using Worker Roles with Azure.

Write Once, Run Anywhere (5 points) Run multiple websites in a single web role. Learn more about running multiple websites in a Windows Azure Web Role.

Windows Azure SDK Guru

Attack of the Blob (5 points) Use page blob features of Windows Azure Blob Storage. Learn more about the Windows Azure Blob Storage.

Tired Of Waiting In Line (5 points) Use time out features of Windows Azure Queues. Learn more about the Windows Azure Queues.

Windows Azure Toolkit Wizard

Game In The Cloud (5 points) Use Windows Azure Toolkit For Social Gaming. Learn more about the Windows Azure Toolkit For Social Gaming.

Phone In The Cloud (5 points) Use Windows Azure Toolkit For Windows Phone. Learn more about the Windows Azure Toolkit For Windows Phone.

You can find the app in the store by searching on 'Channel', or by going over to the 'Music & videos' category, clicking on the category title (to show all apps) and it will be listed right there.

The app, written by Cara on our team, is a HTML/JavaScript app that handles all of the relevant Windows 8 integration points that we could think of, including:

• Search (open up the charms and click Search to look for content across all of the events, shows, series and blogs on Channel 9)
• Play To (while playing a video, open the charms menu again… if you have any play to devices configured you can shoot the video over to them). I’ve used this already to make a video play right onto the screen of another computer in the house, but I’m sure you can figure out some cooler uses
• Share (if you have any apps installed that let you share, then you can go to a Channel 9 post, open up the charms and click Share). Easy way to try this out is to make sure you have an email account set up, then sharing through email will be one of your choices!

More features will be coming over time, and perhaps we can even post some early releases up here for people who would be interested in trying them out!

Thanks for installing, and let us know what you think!

Update: If you are browsing Channel 9 in IE 10 (Metro), then you can get to the app a whole lot quicker than going to the store and searching. Just bring up the address bar and there will be a circular button with the C9 guy in it... click that to either jump to the app's entry in the store or to launch the app if it is already installed. More details on how it works are available here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/10/20/connect-your-web-site-to-your-windows-8-app.aspx

20 new Windows 8 App Development Achievements added. Note: VS Achievements does not work with the code coverage feature of Visual Studio.  If you are experiencing issues with code coverage analysis tools in Visual Studio, disable the VS Achievements extension. Note: VS Achievements does not work with Wix. Disable the VS Achievements extension if you are using Wix.

**************************************************************************************************************************

Version 2.1 - Released July 23, 2012

Two bug fixes. First, this release addresses an issue in the VS2012 version, which caused FxCop achievements from not being achievable. Second, this release fixes the "Show Me The Cache" Azure achievement.

**************************************************************************************************************************

Version 2.0 For Visual Studio 2012 RC- Released July 6, 2012

1 achievement added. Learn more here.

**************************************************************************************************************************

Version 2.0 - Released April 26, 2012

15 new Azure Achievements added. Learn more here.

**************************************************************************************************************************

Version 1.7 - Released April 5, 2012

More FxCop tweaks.Hopefully the last of them.

**************************************************************************************************************************

Version 1.6 - Released March 26, 2012

More FxCop tweaks.

**************************************************************************************************************************

Version 1.5 - Released March 8, 2012

Additional work fixing the FxCop locking issue that wasn't completed in version 1.4.

**************************************************************************************************************************

Version 1.4 - Released March 2, 2012

Addresses the FxCop locking issue. Also adds a setting under Tools/Options/VS Achievements in which FxCop rule checking can be turned off entirely. Fixes picking up goto statements that are in comments. Fixes WPF crashing bug. Updated menu icon.

**************************************************************************************************************************

Version 1.3 - Released February 10, 2012

Addresses the issue where progress based achievement never get award and increment past their target number, aka 14 of 10 completed.  This fix will prevent this from happening. If you have an achievement in this state, you will need to perform the action one more time and it will then unlock the achievement. For example, if you have the 14 of 10 showing for the OCD achievement, you will need to invoke the "Close All But This" command one more time, and it should unlock the achievement.

**************************************************************************************************************************

Version 1.2 - Released February 2, 2012

Addresses the issue where after installing the extension, achievements could be earned in Visual Studio but the Channel9 profile page was never updated. The extension could not communicate with the server.

In specific, some proxies were sending a Expect: 100-Continue header from the HttpWebRequest class, which the server wasn't prepared to handle. The fix was to set the static System.Net.ServicePointManager.Expect100Continue property to false. 

We believe many people reporting issues with proxies will be fixed by this build. There is no reason to upgrade to this build otherwise.

**************************************************************************************************************************

Version 1.1 - Released January 24, 2012

Addresses the issue of users with an underscore in their Channel9 username.  If your username doesn't have an underscore, there is no need to upgrade. If you installed version 1.0 of the extension and registered with a username that had an underscore, you will need to take the following steps. 

1. Go to Tools --> Extension Manager...
2. Click Updates and update the Visual Studio Achievements Extension
3. Restart Visual Studio
4. Go to Tools --> Options --> VS Achievements and click the Change User button
5. Log in and authorize the app

**************************************************************************************************************************

Version 1.0 - Released January 17, 2012

Initial release!

Download the Visual Studio Achievements extension

So you are racking up points in Visual Studio Achievements. You should tell the world about it! Enter the Visual Studio Achievement Widget!

This widget is a small(<6k), simple and customizable javascript file that you can drop on your own page to give up-to-date status on your current state with Visual Studio Achievements.

Adding this widget to a blog is trivial. Most blog platforms (WordPress, BlogEngine.NET) have a free form HTML widget. Simply use that and add one of the script examples below to it. You can see an example of the widget live on Karsten's blog at http://rhizohm.net/irhetoric.

Here is an example of the default state of this widget and the code to get this on your page.

Default:

<script src="http://video.ch9.ms/widgets/VSachievements.min.js?user=geoffreyk" id="ch9VSachievements" defer="defer"></script>
 

(scroll down for more examples)

This script will execute onLoad of the containing HTML page, make a JSONP call to the Visual Studio Achievements API to retrieve the current status of the user, and then generate and insert HTML into the parent document.

The only requirement is to give the widget a valid Channel 9 username that is registered with Visual Studio Achievements in the query string argument "user". The widget will by default draw it's results immediately after the script tag used to insert it into your page. Everything else is optional.

How to Customize

All of the customization for this script is done through the query string in the script embed tag or through CSS that you include on your page. Take a look at the examples to see this in action.

There are a number of options to control the information that is displayed by the widget. A complete list of these parameters is below. Most are pretty self-explanatory and can be figured out just by playing with them.  But here are a few key ones to pay attention to.

"defaultCSS"

The widget has a few CSS styles that will include by default. (Listed below). If you want, set this parameter to false and you can have complete control over the CSS. Note that all of the styles included by default are sand-boxed under the .ch9Achievements class. This is the class of the parent container that holds all of the generated HTML. This is to keep the default widget styles from wreaking havoc on the rest of your page. You can also use this class to add your own styles if you find you need a bit more tweaking to get the widget to look right on your page. Use the sample HTML as a guide.

"displayId"

If you don't want the script to place it's results immediately after the script tag, you can specify the ID of an element where you would like the widget to place it's results. This is handy if you like to have all of your script tags in the HEAD of your page.

"mainTitleHeadline"

The main headline is wrapped in an H3 tag. If this doesn't work for your page, you can change the tag to H1-H7, DIV or SPAN. Use whatever fits best with your page.

"showTimezoneOffest"

It can get a bit confusing talking about times on the internet. The time displayed is the time in the timezone of the user who earned the achievement, not the timezone of the person viewing the page. If this type of detail is important to you, you can toggle this on to prevent any confusion. 

"showCompleted", "showStarted", "showNotStarted"

Use these to toggle which group of achievements to show. By default, only completed achievements are displayed. You can control how many in each group with "maxAchievements"

Here is a complete reference of all available parameters with a rough image of where the parameters are applied, followed by some more examples of how the widget can be configured, the widget's default CSS and a generic example of the HTML it generates.

Query String Parameters

• "user"
  This is the only *required* parameter. Must be a valid Channel 9 username that is registered in Visual Studio Achievements.

• "defaultCSS"
  Defaults to true. If true, the default styles are added to the page.

• "displayId"
  Defaults to null. Give the ID of a DOM element where the widget is to be displayed. If null, the widget is displayed immediately after the widget script in the DOM.

• "showMainTitle"
  Defaults to true. If true, "Visual Studio Achievements" is displayed as a link to http://channel9.msdn.com/achievements/visualstudio. The link has the class "ch9AchievementsTitleLink". Username is not be displayed if "showMainTitle" is false. The text is wrapped in the tag specified by "mainTitleHeadline".

• "mainTitleHeadline"
  Defaults to "h3". This is the type of tag that contains the main title, "Visual Studio Achievements". This can be "h1"-"h7", "span" or "div". The tag has the class "ch9AchievementsTitle".

• "showUserName"
  Defaults to true. If true, the Channel 9 "Display Name" is displayed as a link to the user's Visual Studio Achievements page. If the "Display Name" does not exist, the username is used. The link has the class "ch9AchievementsTitleUser". Username is not displayed if "showMainTitle" is false.

• "showScore"
  Defaults to true. If true, the user's score is displayed with the class "ch9AchievementsScore".

• "showMainDescription"
  Defaults to false. If true, a description of the Visual Studio Achievements is displayed with the class "ch9AchievementsMainDescription".

• "maxAchievements"
  Defaults to "all". This is the number of achievements to display in each completion group. This can be any integer, or "all",

• "showMore"
  Defaults to true. If true, a 'More' link to the user's Visual Studio Achievements page is displayed inside a container with the class "ch9AchievementMore" if not all achievements in a completion group have been displayed.

• "showDescription"
  Defaults to true. If true, the achievement description is displayed with the class "ch9AchievementDescription".

• "showPoints"
  Default to true. If true, the achievement point value is displayed with the class "ch9AchievementPoints".

• "showIcon"
  Defaults to true. If true, the achievement icon is displayed. Icon size (large/small) is specified by "iconSize".

• "iconSize"
  Defaults to "small". If "large", a large icon (100x100) is displayed, otherwise a small icon (40x40) is displayed. This can be "small" or "large". "iconSize" has no effect unless "showIcon" is true.

• "showDateEarned"
  Defaults to true. If true, the date an achievement is earned is displayed with the class "ch9AchievementDateEarned" in the format Dec 15, 2011 There is a date earned only for completed achievements.

• "showTimeEarned"
  Defaults to true. If true, the time an achievement is earned is displayed in a span tag inside the "ch9AchievementDateEarned" p tag. Time earned is not displayed if "showDateEarned" is false.

• "showTimezoneOffest"
  Defaults to false. If true, the timezone an achievement is earned is displayed in the time earned span tag inside the "ch9AchievementDateEarned" p tag. Timezone earned is not displayed if "showDateEarned" or "showTimeEarned" are false.

• "showCompleted"
  Defaults to true. If true, achievements that have been earned will be displayed. The container will have the classes "ch9UserAchievements" and "ch9AchievementsEarned"

• "showStarted"
  Defaults to false. If true, achievements that have been started will be displayed. The container will have the classes "ch9UserAchievements" and "ch9AchievementsStarted"

• "showNotStarted"
  Defaults to false. If true, achievements that have been not been started will be displayed. The container will have the classes "ch9UserAchievements" and "ch9AchievementsNotStarted

More Examples

Full:

<script src="http://video.ch9.ms/widgets/VSachievements.min.js?user=geoffreyk&showMainDescription=true&maxAchievements=2&showStarted=true&showNotStarted=true&showTimezoneOffest=true" id="ch9VSachievements" defer="defer"></script>
 

Large Icons:

<script src="http://video.ch9.ms/widgets/VSachievements.min.js?user=geoffreyk&maxAchievements=5&iconSize=large" id="ch9VSachievements" defer="defer"></script>
 

Small:

<script src="http://video.ch9.ms/widgets/VSachievements.min.js?user=geoffreyk&showPoints=false&showDescription=false&showTimeEarned=false&showMore=false" id="ch9VSachievements" defer="defer"></script>
 

Mini:

<script src="http://video.ch9.ms/widgets/VSachievements.min.js?user=geoffreyk&showPoints=false&showDescription=false&showTimeEarned=false&showUserName=false&showScore=false&showIcon=false&showDateEarned=false&showMore=false" id="ch9VSachievements" defer="defer"></script>
 

Default CSS

.ch9Achievements p {
    margin: 0px;
}

.ch9Achievements ul,
.ch9Achievements .ch9AchievementNone {
    list-style: none outside none;
    margin: 0px 5px;
    padding: 0px;
}

.ch9Achievements li {
    clear: both;
    margin-bottom: 15px;
    overflow: hidden;
    zoom: 1;
}

.ch9Achievements .ch9smallIcon img {
    float: left;
    max-width: 40px;
}

.ch9Achievements .ch9smallIcon p {
    padding-left: 45px;
}

.ch9Achievements .ch9largeIcon img {
    float: left;
    max-width: 100px;
}

.ch9Achievements .ch9largeIcon p {
    padding-left: 105px;
}

.ch9Achievements .ch9UserAchievementsHeading {
    font-weight: bold;
    margin-bottom: 5px;
    margin-top: 15px;
}

.ch9Achievements .ch9AchievementTitle {
    font-weight: bold;
}

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<div class="ch9Achievements">
    <h3 class="ch9AchievementsTitle">
        <a class="ch9AchievementsTitleLink" href="http://channel9.msdn.com/achievements/visualstudio">Visual Studio Achievements </a> 
        for&nbsp;<a class="ch9AchievementsTitleUser" href="http://channel9.msdn.com/niners/Username/achievements/visualstudio">Username</a>
    </h3>
    <p class="ch9AchievementsScore">Current Score: XX</p>
    <p class="ch9AchievementsMainDescription">Description</p>
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                <p class="ch9AchievementTitle"><a href="http://channel9.msdn.com/niners/Username/achievements/visualstudio/xxx">Achievement Title</a></p>
                <p class="ch9AchievementPoints">(XX points)</p>
                <p class="ch9AchievementDescription">Achievement Description</p>
                <p class="ch9AchievementDateEarned">MMM&nbsp;DD,&nbsp;YYY <span>at H:MM&nbsp;AM UTC-HH:MM</span></p>
            </li>
            ...
            <li>
                <p class="ch9AchievementMore"><a href="http://channel9.msdn.com/niners/Username/achievements/visualstudio">More...</a></p>
            </li>
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    <div class="ch9UserAchievements ch9AchievementsStarted">
        <p class="ch9UserAchievementsHeading">Started</p>
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                <p class="ch9AchievementTitle"><a href="http://channel9.msdn.com/niners/Username/achievements/visualstudio/xxx">Achievement Title</a></p>
                <p class="ch9AchievementPoints">(XX points)</p>
                <p class="ch9AchievementDescription">Achievement Description</p>
            </li>
            ...
            <li>
                <p class="ch9AchievementMore"><a href="http://channel9.msdn.com/niners/Username/achievements/visualstudio">More...</a></p>
            </li>
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    <div class="ch9UserAchievements ch9AchievementsNotStarted">
        <p class="ch9UserAchievementsHeading">Not Started</p>
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                <img src="http://files.ch9.ms/vsachievements/xxx.png">
                <p class="ch9AchievementTitle"><a href="http://channel9.msdn.com/niners/Username/achievements/visualstudio/xxx">Achievement Title</a></p>
                <p class="ch9AchievementPoints">(XX points)</p>
                <p class="ch9AchievementDescription">Achievement Description</p>
            </li>
            ...
            <li>
                <p class="ch9AchievementMore"><a href="http://channel9.msdn.com/niners/Username/achievements/visualstudio">More...</a></p>
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</div>

A software engineer's 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!

Azure Achievements

With Version 2.0 of the extension, we've added 15 new achievements all based on Windows Azure cloud development, which you can read more about here.

Download It

Download Now

How It Works

With the 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:

Figure 1 - Unlocking An Achievement

In addition, your Channel 9 profile is updated with any achievements you earn, recalculating your position on the leaderboard:

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 47 achievements awaiting to be unlocked, all of which are listed here. Here's what the 7 different badges look like:

The Six Categories of Achievements
Customizing Visual Studio	Don't Try This At Home	Good Housekeeping
Just For Fun	Power Coder	Unleashing Visual Studio
	Windows Azure

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:

Figure 3 - Share A Page

Or, you can show a list of achievements on your blog using the 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! Here's an example of the widget on a blog: 

Figure 4 - The Visual Studio Achievements Widget On A Blog

The widget uses our 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 What If Visual Studio Had Achievements inspired us to go build this. That post spawned a reddit post that is the thread which started it all!

Feedback

We're just getting started with Visual Studio Achievements and are hoping to release more in the future. If you have ideas for additional achievements, we'd love to hear about them.  Please use the 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 Q&A section of the achievements gallery page. Give a read to the FAQ as well as your question may already be answered.

Download Now

Visual Studio 2010 Professional, Premium or Ultimate.  Achievements marked with Uses FxCop only work on Visual Studio 2010 Premium or Ultimate unless FxCop is installed. FxCop is a free download and can installed from here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=6544.

Are you going to release any more achievements? I have a great idea for an achievement. Where can I suggest it?

Yes, we are planning to release more achievements for Visual Studio. Please use the Q&A section of the achievements extension to make suggestions for future achievements.

I performed the action of a progress-based achievement multiple times (aka, "Used 'Organize Usings' 50 times") but it only updated the counter once.  What gives?

You can only earn progress-based achievements once a minute.

I did what I was supposed to earn an achievement, but it didn't unlock.

Some achievements are a bit finicky; there may be multiple ways to accomplish the task in Visual Studio but only one way to unlock the achievement. Keep your eye on the Q&A section of the achievements extension for additional discussion about individual achievements.

Is there a screencast about this?

Check out this video on Visual Studio Toolbox, which has a walkthrough of the extension and discusses more about how and why we built this.

How do I see my achievements in Visual Studio?

Once the extension is installed, there is a menu item called Achievements, under the Tools menu:

How do I see my achievements on Channel9?

Once you've installed the extension, an achievements page gets created on Channel9 at http://channel9.msdn.com/niners/username/achievements/visualstudio. This lists all your achievements, both locked and unlocked.  You can find a link to this page on your profile page, which looks like this:

I installed it but it doesn't work at all! What gives?

Is there an underscore in your username? There was a bug with Version 1.0 of the extension if that is the case. Version 1.1 of the Visual Studio Achievements Extension addresses this issue of users with an underscore in their Channel9 username.  If you installed version 1.0 of the extension and registered with a username that had an underscore, you will need to take the following steps. 

1. Go to Tools --> Extension Manager...
2. Click Updates and update the Visual Studio Achievements Extension
3. Restart Visual Studio
4. Go to Tools --> Options --> VS Achievements and click the Change User button
5. Log in and authorize the app

Follow these steps in this exact order and you should be good to go!

I installed it and I can earn achievements, but the server never gets updated.

Version 1.2 (uploaded 2/2/2012) should address the experience where you were able to install the extension and VS notified you that you earned achievements, but then your profile was never updated on Channel9.There's no reason to upgrade to this build otherwise. We believe many people reporting issues with proxies will be fixed by this build.

In specific, some proxies were sending a Expect: 100-Continue header from the HttpWebRequest class, which the server wasn't prepared to handle. The fix was to set the static System.Net.ServicePointManager.Expect100Continue property to false.

Also, when you upgrade your extension, if you get a certificate mismatch error, install this hotfix: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=38654, which will address updating this extension and any other extensions. If you don't want to install the hot fix, you can manually uninstall the extension and then reinstall with the new version.If you are still having issues with your proxy server and this build doesn't solve your problems, please post here and we will continue to investigate the proxy problem.

Some of these achievements promote bad coding practices. Aren't you doing a disservice to engineers by giving badges for bad coding practices?

A few of thoughts on that. First, the "Don't Try This At Home" category was designed to be playful -- in jokes for developers. Second, any badges in that category award zero points. Third, all of the awards in this category are pretty egregious, except perhaps the GOTO achievement, which is a source of contention, as it turns out!  Ultimately, one goal of VS Achievements is to add some humor to the levity of coding.

The Visual Studio team should be spending time working on the product, not turning the IDE into a game! What's up with that?

This project is a Coding For Fun project built by the Channel9 team; no Visual Studio product devs were deployed in the making of this add-in!

Never fear, there is a new feature on Channel 9 just for you… “My Queue”

Below each video, if you are signed in, is a new button ‘+ queue’, which adds the video to a special list just for you!

Click the button and it changes to a little green arrow to show that you’ve put this into your queue, then jump over to your profile and you’ll see a new tab

You can re-order the items, remove them … see how much of a video you’ve watched (tracked across multiple machines, by the way) … and subscribe to your queue using a special private RSS feed (perfect for plugging into Zune and sync’ing with your phone or just pulling the files locally to watch in high def)

Lots of items in your queue? Sort by show to see a handy list grouped by the show/series/blog/event

Let us know what you think and how you are planning to use this new feature!