Upgrade to Visual Studio 2008

**Step Ahead to Visual Studio 2008**

Introduction

Visual Studio 2008 is carrying new features for developers and software industry. There are some features of Visual Studio 2008 Beta version discussed below:

Multi Targeting Support.
Web Designer and CSS Support.
Database Support Features.
AJAX, ASP.Net and Java Script Support.
Project Designer Support.
Language Integrated Query.


1. Multi Targeting Support:
In each Visual Studio release Microsoft supported a specific version of .Net Framework. For example, With VS 2003 : .Net 1.1 Framework, and With VS 2005 : .Net 2.0.

But with VS 2008 release, “Multi-Targeting” is supported. This means developers will be able to design application of any supporting framework. Developer can choose any type of supporting framework at design time.

In Visual Studio 2008 developer can not choose framework version 1.1, only 2.0, 3.0, 3.5 is supported.


2. Web Designer and CSS Support:

Split view editing is addition to visual studio 2008, till VS 2005 only designer view and code view were available. Main objective of this view is that developer can view HTML view and Design view at the dame time and easily make changes in any of the views. Like as he select a tag in code view, the corresponding elements/controls are selected in design view.
CSS Style Manager is new tool inside the IDE called Manage Styles which shows all CSS style sheets for the page.
It can be also useful when we are in any of the views like design, code and split view. It can be activated by choosing format->CSS Style->Manage Styles from the menu.



Transparent Intellisense Mode is new feature of Visual Studio 2008 While using VS 2005/2003 we often find ourselves escaping out of intellisense in order to better see the code around, and then go back and complete what we were doing.
But VS 2008 provides a new feature which allows us to quickly make the intellisense drop-down list semi-transparent. Just hold down the "Ctrl" key while the intellisense drop-down is visible and we will be able to switch it into a transparent mode that enables us to look at the code beneath without having to escape out of Intellisense.

3. Database Support Features:

The Object Relational Designer (O/R Designer) assists developers in creating and editing the objects (LINQ to SQL entities) that map between an application and a remote database.

Hierarchical update capabilities in Dataset Designer, providing generated code that includes the save logic required to maintain referential integrity between related tables.

Local database caching incorporates an SQL Server Compact 3.5 database into an application and configures it to periodically synchronize the data with a remote database on a server.


4. AJAX, ASP.Net and Java Script Support:

One new feature that developers will find with VS 2008 is its built-in support for JavaScript Intellisense. This makes using JavaScript and building AJAX applications significantly easier. A double click on HTML control in design mode would automatically create a click event to the button and would create the basic skeleton of the JavaScript function.

One new JavaScript feature in VS 2008 is the much-improved support for JavaScript debugging. This makes debugging AJAX applications significantly easier.

We can now set both client-side JavaScript breakpoints and VB/C# server-side breakpoints at the same time on the same page and use a single debugger to step through both the server-side and client-side code in a single debug session. This feature is extremely useful for AJAX applications.

5. Project Designer Support:
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) applications have been added to Visual Studio 2008. There are four WPF project types:
WinFX Windows Application
WinFX Web Browser Application
WinFX Custom Control Library
WinFX Service Library
When a WPF project is loaded in the IDE, the user interface of the Project Designer pages lets us specify properties specific to WPF applications.

6. Language Integrated Query:

LINQ is a new feature of Visual Studio 2008 that brings great querying capabilities into the language syntax. LINQ introduces patterns for querying and updating data. A set of new assemblies are provided that enable the use of LINQ with collections, SQL databases, and XML documents.

Conclusion:
This concludes my discourse on enhancement in Visual Studio .Net to Visual Studio .net 2008 Beta for now. I will continue update this article with new features and actual benchmarks in the future.