Microsoft published a white paper about Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. I read it and discuss it in a brief summary. The white paper discuss the different customer experiences that Visual Studio 2008 delivers through seven different technology areas.
- Develop Smart Client Applications
- Create Microsoft Office Applications
- Build Windows Vista Applications
- Handle Data More Productive
- An Improved Developer Experience Overall
- Enable New Web Experiences
- Improve Application Life-cycle Management (ALM)
1: Develop Smart Client Applications
The ClickOnce application deployment is improved. Firefox is supported as a browser, very nice and necessary for ClickOnce becoming successful.
Something I'm not really sure about. Office 2007 UI support for native C++ applications. Those native applications can make use of the Ribbon Bar, Ribbon Status Bar and Mini-toolbar. But why only support native C++ applications? We want this feature for managed C# applications, don't we?
Microsoft Synchronization Services for ADO.NET provides an API to synchronize between data services and the local data store. This could be nice, but I hope it's solid. In the past I sadly met Microsoft Access Replication, something comparable to the basics I think. I'll never suggest a company to use Microsoft Access Replication. But ADO.NET Synchronization Services might work, I guess we will have to wait for Real World Experience on this.
2: Create Microsoft Office Applications
No comments yet, maybe later.
3: Build Windows Vista Applications
Visual Studio now provides tools for Windows Presentation Foundation. We can now use a designer to create our user interface, in the past we needed to use Microsoft Expression Blend.
4: Handle Data More Productive
Also new is the Language Integrated Query (LINQ). It supports querying for objects, databases and XML. And if I'm right LINQ 2 SQL is some sort of ORM tool. I try to look more into this in the future.
5: An Improved Developer Experience Overall
You have the ability to target different .NET Framework platforms while making use of Visual Studio 2008. Very nice, I'm not sure how far this goes. Are you able to build against the .NET Framework 1.1 but are you able to make use of IntelliSense trough the other platforms? Are you able to make use of designers for the .NET Framework 1.1? Don't think so, but I have to check first.
6: Enable New Web Experiences
The new web experiences consists of the integration of a new version of AJAX ASP.NET and the integration of Windows Live Services. Besides this it should be easier to consume a Windows Communication Foundation service.
7: Improve Application Life-cycle Management (ALM)
The most interesting thing is the enhanced Visual Studio Unit Testing. The performance is improved, but I'm interested to see if it is extendable and be used better in conjunction with Mocking frameworks.
