Microsoft Build - GrapeCity Documents, 4 Devs, VSCode, and a Puzzle Room

May 09 2018

We're heading into Day Three of Microsoft Build, and I'm looking forward another great day discussing our products with the attendees! I've been especially gratified by the enthusiastic response to GrapeCity Documents, our newest product line that officially launched on Monday. (I'd have posted yesterday, but my laptop required minor surgery due to a traveling mishap.)

GrapeCity Documents for Excel and PDF

Booth E25

We always engage in great conversations with attendees--we catch up with longtime users of ActiveReports, discuss the future of Wijmo's JavaScript controls, that sort of thing--but the discussions about our Excel and PDF APIs consumed most of our time. Attendees loved hearing about the .NET Standard 2.0 support, the speed and light weight, the features, and the generous licensing--I'm nearly hoarse talking about it! Happily hoarse, I should add.

Troy and Christian at the booth

VS Code

Yesterday was much quieter at the booth, with more attendees at the sessions than strolling the Expo floor. Fortunately, as a result, I had time to stroll the floor myself and engage in some conversation with the coders behind VSCode--we talked find and replace with the developers who code it. While I still can't find and replace in all open documents, as I'd hoped, I did learn how to search for a string and line break using regex. We also realized we could build an extension that will allow our team to troubleshoot our YAML-based blogs more easily.

Me, capturing regex

Xamarin and .NET Core 3.0

Of course, we were all discussing the future of Xamarin, .NET Core 3.0, and desktop. We reunited the original 4 Devs for a quick discussion.

Mixed reality

Mixed reality is always a hit here, and the booth team took a half hour to visit a puzzle room. Don't watch the video if you don't want to see how to solve the puzzle, but definitely watch it if you want to see me not figure out how to hit a bell hard enough.

Heading into day three today, and then homeward bound! We'll have more in-depth blogs from Kelley and the attendees soon.

Jody Handley