The release of Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio Team Systems marked a major revision to the .NET development experience. It brought us code snippets, custom project templates, refactoring, data binding wizards, smart tags, modeling tools, automated testing tools, and project and task management—to name just a few features. Visual Studio 2008 builds on these tools and provides additional core changes and additions to the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE). The languages have many new improvements, the Framework has a number of additions, and the tools have been significantly enhanced. For instance, Visual Studio 2008 includes such things as Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) for building richer client solutions, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) to help build more dynamic service-oriented solutions, and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) to enable structured programming around business processes. In addition, there are language enhancements such as the Language Integrated Query (LINQ) and team systems enhancements such as code metrics, performance profiling, and a revised team build system. All of these tools are meant to increase your productivity and success rate. This book is meant to help you unlock the many tools built into Visual Studio so that you can realize these gains.

Develop User Applications

Develop User Applications

 .NET has quickly become pervasive throughout the entire Windows product world. It took only a few short years, but it is now fair to say that .NET is everywhere; Windows programming and .NET programming are now synonymous. Many of the user applications we interact with have some if not all of their base in .NET. This includes web applications, rich clients built on Windows, mobile applications, Office solutions, smart clients that work across the Web, and more. The good news is that the .NET developer is in high demand, and you can leverage your skills to target a wide audience.

ASP.NET—This allows you to build web-based (and browser-based) solutions using HTML, AJAX, and server-side processing. .
NetCF—The .NET Compact Framework 3.5 runs on small devices and allows you to build applications that target these mobile devices. .
Sliverlight—This is Microsoft’s new solution for developing highly interactive solutions experiences that combine video and animation, delivered across the Web for both Windows and Mac. .
VSTO—Visual Studio Tools for Office allows you to build solutions based on the Office productivity tools (including Outlook and SharePoint). .
WinForms—These are Windows forms used to deliver business applications and tools built on the windows platform. WinForms applications can be stand-alone or data-driven. In addition, WinForm applications may connect to web services, leverage resources on the client, and more. .
WPF—Windows Presentation Foundation combines WinForms, XAML, Smart Clients, 3D graphics, and more to allow you to create the richest, most fully featured client solutions that run on Windows. WPF applications can be delivered similar to a WinForms application. In addition, they can exist as a browser-hosted solution that runs in a security sandbox.
XNA—This technology allows you to build Xbox games using Visual Studio.