Visual Studio 2008
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 was the first application to feature a visual designer for the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) with snap lines and event tabs that enable RAD-style development. It also supported developers targeting the 2007 Microsoft Office System with designers for both Outlook and the fluent menu. For multidisciplinary teams, Visual Studio Team System delivered improved scalability, including support for continuous integration.
It also provided Web developers with CSS formatting tools, the ability to code in ASP.NET AJAX, and IntelliSense support for JavaScript. The introduction of “Language Integrated Query" (LINQ) has allowed advanced data manipulation and processing in Visual Basic and C#. To improve application performance, Visual Studio 2008 offered code analysis tools, including code metrics that can identify inefficient or other problem areas in code. An integrated build system also featured multithreading support for both building and debugging.
Visual Studio is a complete suite of tools for building both desktop and team-based enterprise Web applications. In addition to building high-performing desktop applications, you can use Visual Studio's powerful component-based development tools and other technologies to simplify team-based design, development, and deployment of enterprise solutions.
Application Development in Visual studio
Visual Studio provides two containers to help you efficiently manage the items that are required by your development effort, such as references, data connections, folders, and files. These containers are called solutions and projects. Also, Visual Studio provides Solution Folders to organize related projects into groups and then perform actions on those groups of projects. Solution Explorer, an interface for viewing and managing these containers and their associated items, is part of the integrated development environment.
Visual studio Templates
Visual Studio project and item templates provide reusable and customizable project and item stubs that accelerate the development process, removing the need to create new projects and items from scratch. A number of predefined project and item templates are installed when you install Visual Studio. For example, the Visual Basic, Visual C#, and Visual J# Windows Application and Class Library templates available in the New Project dialog box are all project templates. Installed item templates are available from the Add New Item dialog box, and include items such as XML files, HTML pages, and Style Sheets.
These templates provide a starting point for users to begin creating new projects or expanding current projects. Project templates provide the basic files needed for a particular project type, include standard assembly references, and set default project properties and compiler options. Item templates can range in complexity from a single empty file with the correct file extension to a multi-file item containing items such as source code files with stub code, designer information files, and embedded resources.
In addition to the installed templates available in the New Project and Add New Item dialog boxes, you can author your own templates or download and use templates created by the community. For more information, see Creating Project and Item Templates and Finding and Sharing Project and Item Templates.
A number of predefined project and project item templates are installed when you install Visual Studio. These templates appear as project types in the New Project Dialog Box. You can use one of the many project templates to create the basic project container and a preliminary set of items for your application, class, control, or library. You can also use one of the many project item templates to create, for example, a Windows Forms application or a Web Forms page to customize as you develop your application.
Each template includes a .vstemplate file with the metadata that provides Visual Studio with the information required to display the template in the New Project and Add New Item dialog boxes and create a project or item from the template.
Visual Studio templates are divided into two major categories: project templates and item templates. tem templates are individual items that a user can add to a project by using the Add New Item dialog box. Examples of item templates included with Visual Studio are:
• Windows Form
• Code File
• XML Schema
Project templates are entire projects from which a user can create a new project by using the New Project dialog box. A project template includes all the files necessary to begin a specific type of project. Examples of project templates included with Visual Studio are:
• Windows Application
• Class Library
• Empty Project
When you create a new project, icons in the New Project dialog box and Add Project dialog box represent the available project types and their templates. Selecting an item from the Project types pane populates a list of project templates in the Templates pane. The project template you choose determines the output type and other options available for that project.
All project templates add the necessary files and references for the project type.
Windows Application
You can create traditional Microsoft Windows-based applications and client/server applications by utilizing the designers in Visual Studio. Microsoft Visual Studio offers several ways to develop Windows-based applications that run locally on users' computers. With Visual Studio, you can create Windows-based applications and user interfaces (UI) by using Windows Forms. You can also create Windows service applications by using either Visual Studio or the .NET Framework version 2.0 Software Development Kit (SDK), and you can create Windows Win32-based applications by using the Visual Studio Project Wizard. Starting with Visual Studio 2008, you can create Windows-based applications by using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). A Visual Studio Windows-based application is built around the .NET Framework, a rich set of classes that you can use to develop sophisticated applications. You can create Windows-based applications by using any programming language that works with the .NET Framework (Visual Basic, C#, C++, and many others) and .NET Framework debugging tools.
Windows-based applications created by using .NET Framework classes offer other benefits. You can access operating-system services and take advantage of other benefits provided by your user's computing environment. You can access data by using ADO.NET.
Programming with components
The designer architecture in Visual Studio lets you assemble non-visual component classes as easily as you assemble Visual Basic forms. The following sections explain how to create your own components, and how to assemble them from the sophisticated components in the .NET Framework classes.
This section defines what a component is and provides an overview of .NET Framework programming concepts that are especially relevant to component programming. While the term component has many meanings, in the .NET Framework a component is a class that implements theSystem.ComponentModel.IComponent interface or one that derives directly or indirectly from a class that implements this interface. The default base class implementation of the IComponent interface isSystem.ComponentModel.Component.
If you want your components and controls to be usable from other programming languages, you must author them in a Common Language Specification (CLS)-compliant language and ensure that all public and protected members are CLS-compliant. The Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) provides compilers for four CLS-compliant languages: Visual Basic, C#, C++, and J#.