Some of the new enhancements for C# include
a shorthand property declaration that allows you to
define an object property in a single line of code. You
can see an example of this shorthand property declaration
in the following code snippet:
Public class Employee
{
public string FirstName( get; set;)
public string LastName (get; set;)
}
The most notable missing feature (and the one very
few people will miss) is J#. J# is the .NET Framework’s
Java-like language. Not surprisingly, few
Microsoft developers use it, and Microsoft sensibly
dropped it from Visual Studio 2008.
Web
AJAX became popular shortly after the release of Visual
Studio 2005 so there was no real Web 2.0 support
in that version. Microsoft rectified this situation with
Visual Studio 2008 by adding support for AJAX as well
as IntelliSense and debugging support for JavaScript.
Another new Web development feature in Visual
Studio 2008 is the Web page designer. The new Web
Page designer uses the same design engine as Microsoft’s
Expression Web, which provides a split view of the graphical
design and the HTML source, as Figure 3 shows.
Visual Studio 2008 also features tight integration with
Microsoft Expression Web through the use of Cascading
Style Sheets (CSS) and shared project files. This
functionality enables Web designers to use Microsoft
Expression Web to design the organization’s Web interface
and then turn over that project to the Visual Studio
2008 Web developers to add the business logic. The use
of CSS helps ensure that the design will remain consistent
as the developers add business logic to the project.
Microsoft has also added a number of new controls,
including a ListView control and a DataPager control. The new ListView control offers new data
display flexibility and is CSS-compatible. The Data-
Pager control handles all the logic required to enable
users to page through large numbers of records.
Mobile Application Development
Like Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio 2008 Professional
supports the development of mobile device
applications called SmartDevice Projects (Mobile device
development isn’t available in the Visual Studio
2008 Standard Edition). Visual Studio 2008’s new device
emulator has several improvements. You can now
target the Pocket PC 2003, Smartphone 2003, and
Windows Mobile 5.0. The device emulator supports
battery emulation, which allows the device emulator
to send a low-battery event. This lets your mobile
applications test for low battery conditions. Figure
4 shows Visual Studio 2008’s mobile device emulator.
Visual Studio 2008 includes that latest version of
Microsoft’s device development platforms: the .NET
Compact Framework 3.5. You can target multiple
versions of the .NET Compact Framework. Thus,
when you create a new SmartDevice project, you can
choose to target either the .NET Compact Framework
2.0 or the .NET Compact Framework 3.5.
In addition, Visual Studio 2008 provides a new
Sync Services for ADO.NET that enables new mobile
applications to continue to provide end-users with the
same application experience whether they’re connected
or disconnected. The mobile application runs using the
SQL Server Compact edition as a local data store and
using Sync Services can periodically connect to your
backend database server to provide bidirectional updates
to and from the mobile application.
Office Development
The Visual Studio 2008 Professional edition also includes
Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO), which
lets you create business applications with the different
members of the Office 2007 and Office 2003 suites.
VSTO supports the new Office 2007 ribbon interface,
and enables developers to add regions and buttons to
the ribbon. In addition, VSTO provides support for
customizing the Outlook 2007 interface by adding
your own Outlook Form Regions. Outlook Form Regions
let you integrate your business applications with
the Outlook 2007 interface. For instance, you could use
a custom Outlook Form Region to expose portions of
your organization’s CRM or ERP application directly
in Outlook. Microsoft calls these Office-enabled applications
Office Business Applications (OBAs).
The .NET Result
Visual Studio 2008 is a must-have upgrade for every
Microsoft Web and database developer. It’s new support
of AJAX, JavaScript development, CSS, and
Web Expression integration make it a more capable
and productive platform than any prior release of Visual
Studio. For database developers, there’s no doubt
that LINQ is the wave of the future, and now is the
time to get started.
You can learn more about Visual Studio 2008 at
www.microsoft.com/vstudio, and you can download a 90-day trial of Visual Studio 2008 from msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa700831.aspx. Or if you
want to skip the installation experience, you can download
a Microsoft virtual machine (VM) image with a
trial version of Visual Studio 2008 preinstalled.
End of Article
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