Visual Studio 2008 and .NET3.5 New Features
Today we shipped Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5. You can download the final release using one of the links below:
- If you are a MSDN subscriber, you can download your copy from the MSDN subscription site.
- If you are a non-MSDN subscriber, you can download a 90-day free trial edition of Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite here. A 90-day trial edition of Visual Studio 2008 Professional (which will be a slightly smaller download) will be available next week. A 90-day free trial edition of Team Foundation Server can also be downloaded here.
- If you want to use the free Visual Studio 2008 Express editions (which are much smaller and totally free), you can download them here.
- If you want to just install the .NET Framework 3.5 runtime, you can download it here.
Quick Tour of Some of the New Features
Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 contain a ton of new functionality and improvements. Below are links to blog posts I've done myself as well as links to videos you can watch to learn more about it:
VS 2008 Multi-Targeting Support
VS 2008 enables you to build applications that target multiple versions of the .NET Framework. This means you can use VS 2008 to open, edit and build existing .NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 2.0 applications (including ASP.NET 2.0 applications using ASP.NET AJAX 1.0), and continue to deploy these application on .NET 2.0 machines. You can learn more about how this works from my blog post here:
ASP.NET
.NET 3.5 has ASP.NET AJAX built-in (no separate download required). In addition to including all of the features in ASP.NET AJAX 1.0, ASP.NET 3.5 also now includes richer support for UpdatePanels integrating with WebParts, ASP.NET AJAX integration with controls like <asp:menu> and <asp:treeview>, WCF support for JSON, and many other AJAX improvements.
VS 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008 also now have great support for integrating JavaScript and
- VS 2008 JavaScript Intellisense
- VS 2008 JavaScript Debugging
- VS 2008 ASP.NET AJAX Control Extender Support
- VS 2008 JavaScript Intellisense for Silverlight
You can watch some videos that discuss ASP.NET AJAX and Visual Studio 2008 support for it here.
I also highly recommend the excellent ASP.NET AJAX in Action book to learn more about ASP.NET AJAX (both client-side and server-side).
VS 2008 Web Designer and CSS Support
VS 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express includes a significantly improved HTML web designer (the same one that ships with Expression Web). This delivers support for split-view editing, nested master pages, and great CSS integration. Below are some articles I've written that discuss this more:
- VS 2008 Web Designer and CSS Support
- VS 2008 Nested Master Page Support
- VS 2008 Vertical Split View Support
- VS 2008 Support to Treat CSS and JavaScript Validation Issues as Warnings instead of Errors
ASP.NET 3.5 also has a new <asp:ListView> control that provides the ability to perform rich data scenarios with total control over the markup. It works nicely with the new CSS support in VS 2008. You can learn more about it from my article here:
You can watch some videos that discuss the new Visual Studio 2008 web designer features and the new ListView/DataPager controls here.
Language Improvements and LINQ
The new VB and C# compilers in VS 2008 deliver significant improvements to the languages. Both add functional programming concepts that enable you to write cleaner, terser, and more expressive code. These features also enable a new programming model we call LINQ (language integrated query) that makes querying and working with data a first-class programming concept with .NET.
Below are some of the articles I've written that explore these new language features using C#:
- Automatic Properties, Object Initializer and Collection Initializers
- Extension Methods
- Lambda Expressions
- Query Syntax
- Anonymous Types
Here are a few additional blog posts I've written that show off some of the new VS 2008 code editing support and some cool ways to use these new language features:
- VS 2008 Code Editing Features
- Tip/Trick: Building a ToJson() Extension Method using .NET 3.5
- The C# ?? null coalescing operator (and using it with LINQ)
- Using LINQ to XML (and how to build a custom RSS Feed Reader with it)
The Visual Basic team has also created some great free videos that cover LINQ. You can watch them here.
Data Access Improvements with LINQ to SQL
LINQ to SQL is a built-in OR/M (object relational mapper) in .NET 3.5. It enables you to model relational databases using a .NET object model. You can then query the database using LINQ, as well as update/insert/delete data from it. LINQ to SQL fully supports transactions, views, and stored procedures. It also provides an easy way to integrate business logic and validation rules into your data model. Below are some of the articles I've written that explore how to use it:
- Part 1: Introduction to LINQ to SQL
- Part 2: Defining our Data Model Classes
- Part 3: Querying our Database
- Part 4: Updating our Database
- Part 5: Binding UI using the ASP:LinqDataSource Control
- Part 6: Retrieving Data Using Stored Procedures
- Part 7: Updating our Database using Stored Procedures
- Part 8: Executing Custom SQL Expressions
- Part 9: Using a Custom LINQ Expression with the <asp:LinqDataSource> control
I think you'll find that LINQ and LINQ to SQL makes it much easier to build much cleaner data models, and write much cleaner data code. I'll be adding more posts to my LINQ to SQL series in the weeks and months ahead (sorry for the delay in finishing them earlier - so much to-do and so little time to-do it all!).
Scott Stanfield is also working on creating some great LINQ to SQL videos for the www.asp.net site based on my article series above (all videos are in both VB and C#). You can watch the first 4 videos in this series here.
Browsing the .NET Framework Library Source using Visual Studio
As I blogged a few weeks ago, we will be releasing a reference version of the .NET Framework library source code as part of this release. Visual Studio 2008 has built-in debugger support to automatically step-into and debug this code on demand (VS 2008 can pull down the source for the appropriate .NET Framework library file automatically for you).
We are deploying the source servers to enable this right now, and will be publishing the steps to turn this feature on in the next few weeks.
Lots of other improvements
The list above is only a small set of the improvements coming. For client development VS 2008 includes WPF designer and project support. ClickOnce and WPF XBAPs now work with FireFox. WinForms and WPF projects can also now use the ASP.NET Application Services (Membership, Roles, Profile) for roaming user data.
Office development is much richer - including support for integrating with the Office 2007 ribbon, and with Outlook. Visual Studio Tools for Office support is also now built-into Visual Studio (you no longer need to buy a separate product).
New WCF and Workflow projects and designers are now included in VS 2008. Unit testing support is now much faster and included in VS Professional (and no longer just VSTS). Continuous Integration support is now built-in with TFS.
Installation Suggestions
People often ask me for suggestions on how best to upgrade from previous betas of Visual Studio 2008. In general I'd recommend uninstalling the Beta2 bits explicitly. As part of this you should uninstall Visual Studio 2008 Beta2, .NET Framework Beta2, as well as the Visual Studio Web Authoring Component (these are all separate installs and need to be uninstalled separately). I then usually recommend rebooting the machine after uninstalling just to make sure everything is clean before you kick off the new install. You can then install the final release of VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 on the machine.
Once installed, I usually recommend explicitly running the Tools->Import and Export Settings menu option, choosing the "Reset Settings" option, and then re-pick your preferred profile. This helps ensure that older settings from the Beta2 release are no longer around (and sometimes seems to help with performance).
Note that VS 2008 runs side-by-side with VS 2005 - so it is totally fine to have both on the same machine (you will not have any problems with them on the same box).
Silverlight Tools and VS Web Deployment Project Add-Ins
Two popular add-ins to Visual Studio are not yet available to download for the final VS 2008 release. These are the Silverlight 1.1 Tools Alpha for Visual Studio and the Web Deployment Project add-in for Visual Studio. Our hope is to post updates to both of them to work with the final VS 2008 release in the next two weeks. If you are doing Silverlight 1.1 development using VS 2008 Beta2 you'll want to stick with with VS 2008 Beta2 until this updated Silverlight Tools Add-In is available.
PS：VS 2008 Multi-Targeting Support
What is Multi-Targeting?
With the past few releases of Visual Studio, each Visual Studio release only supported a specific version of the .NET Framework. For example, VS 2002 only worked with .NET 1.0, VS 2003 only worked with .NET 1.1, and VS 2005 only worked with .NET 2.0.
One of the big changes we are making starting with the VS 2008 release is to support what we call "Multi-Targeting" - which means that Visual Studio will now support targeting multiple versions of the .NET Framework, and developers will be able to start taking advantage of the new features Visual Studio provides without having to always upgrade their existing projects and deployed applications to use a new version of the .NET Framework library.
Now when you open an existing project or create a new one with VS 2008, you can pick which version of the .NET Framework to work with - and the IDE will update its compilers and feature-set to match this. Among other things, this means that features, controls, projects, item-templates, and assembly references that don't work with that version of the framework will be hidden, and when you build your application you'll be able to take the compiled output and copy it onto a machine that only has an older version of the .NET Framework installed, and you'll know that the application will work.
Creating a New Project in VS 2008 that targets .NET 2.0
To see an example of multi-targeting in action on a recent build of VS 2008 Beta 2, we can select File->New Project to create a new application.
Notice below how in the top-right of the new project dialog there is now a dropdown that allows us to indicate which versions of the .NET Framework we want to target when we create the new project. If I keep it selected on .NET Framework 3.5, I'll see a bunch of new project templates listed that weren't in previous versions of VS (including support for WPF client applications and WCF web service projects):
If I change the dropdown to target .NET 2.0 instead, it will automatically filter the project list to only show those project templates supported on machines with the .NET 2.0 framework installed:
If I create a new ASP.NET Web Application with the .NET 2.0 dropdown setting selected, it will create a new ASP.NET project whose compilation settings, assembly references, and web.config settings are configured to work with existing ASP.NET 2.0 servers:
When you go to the control Toolbox, you'll see that only those controls that work on ASP.NET 2.0 are listed:
And if you choose Add->Reference and bring up the assembly reference picker dialog, you'll see that those .NET class assemblies that aren't supported on .NET 2.0 are grayed out and can't be added to the project (notice how the "ok" button is not active below when I have a .NET 3.0 or .NET 3.5 assembly selected):
So why use VS 2008 if you aren't using the new .NET 3.5 features?
You might be wondering: "so what value do I get when using VS 2008 to work on a ASP.NET 2.0 project versus just using my VS 2005 today?" Well, the good news is that you get a ton of tool-specific value with VS 2008 that you'll be able to take advantage of immediately with your existing projects without having to upgrade your framework/ASP.NET version. A few big tool features in the web development space I think you'll really like include:
- JavaScript intellisense
- Much richer JavaScript debugging
- Nested ASP.NET master page support at design-time
- Rich CSS editing and layout support within the WYSIWYG designer
- Split-view designer support for having both source and design views open on a page at the same time
- A much faster ASP.NET page designer - with dramatic perf improvements in view-switches between source/design mode
- Automated .SQL script generation and hosting deployment support for databases on remote servers
You'll be able to use all of the above features with any version of the .NET Framework - without having to upgrade your project to necessarily target newer framework versions. I'll be blogging about these features (as well as the great new framework features) over the next few weeks.
So how can I upgrade an existing project to .NET 3.5 later?
If at a later point you want to upgrade your project/site to target the NET 3.0 or NET 3.5 version of the framework libraries, you can right-click on the project in the solution explorer and pull up its properties page:
You can change the "Target Framework" dropdown to select the version of the framework you want the project to target. Doing this will cause VS to automatically update compiler settings and references for the project to use the correct framework version. For example, it will by default add some of the new LINQ assemblies to your project, as well as add the new System.Web.Extensions assembly that ships in .NET 3.5 which delivers new ASP.NET controls/runtime features and provides built-in ASP.NET AJAX support (this means that you no longer need to download the separate ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 install - it is now just built-in with the .NET 3.5 setup):
Once you change your project's target version you'll also see new .NET 3.5 project item templates show up in your add->new items dialog, you'll be able to reference assemblies built against .NET 3.5, as well as see .NET 3.5 specific controls show up in your toolbox.
For example, below you can now see the new <asp:listview> control (which is an awesome new control that provides the ability to do data reporting, editing, insert, delete and paging scenarios - with 100% control over the markup generated and no inline styles or other html elements), as well as the new <asp:linqdatasource> control (which enables you to easily bind and work against LINQ to SQL data models), and <asp:datapager> control show up under the "Data" section of our toolbox:
Note that in addition to changing your framework version "up" in your project properties dialog, you can also optionally take a project that is currently building against .NET 3.0 or 3.5 and change it "down" (for example: move it from .NET 3.5 to 2.0). This will automatically remove the newer assembly references from your project, update your web.config file, and allow you to compile against the older framework (note: if you have code in the project that was written against the new APIs, obviously you'll need to change it).
What about .NET 1.0 and 1.1?