Catalyst Development

Microsoft has released Visual Studio 2010, which includes a new IDE, new language features and a new version of the .NET Framework. We’ve updated the current versions of our SocketTools .NET family of products to include assemblies that target version 4.0 of the .NET Framework. We also have some additional information about SocketTools compatibility with Visual Studio 2010 on our website.

For Visual Basic programmers, the new version of Visual Studio includes some nice features such as implicit line continuation (no more underscore characters to continue lines), auto-implemented class properties, collection initializers and lambda expressions (essentially functions within functions). On the C# side of things, they’ve added support for late binding to dynamic types, and improved interoperability with COM objects. This is a real benefit to C# developers who need to make extensive use of the Office automation APIs, since these changes make it significantly easier to work with. For the most part, the language changes make it easier to do more with less code, and brings VB and C# into parity with one another in terms of language features and overall functionality. Microsoft decided to merge the VB and C# language teams together, ensuring that both languages are “first class citizens” in the .NET universe.

For those who are interested in working with Visual Studio 2010, here’s some useful links:

• Visual Studio 2010 Express Editions
• Visual Studio 2010 Professional
• .NET Framework 4 Installer
• Visual Studio 2010 Help Keyword Index
• Help Viewer Power Tool

Visual Studio 2010 Professional can be installed as a 30-day trial and you can get an additional 60-day extension, if necessary. The Express Editions are free, of course, but are more limited. New projects build with VS2010 will target the .NET 4 Framework, so your end-users would need to have that installed. You could either have them install it using the web installer I linked above, or you could have your own installation program pre-install the framework.

The link to the keyword index addon is something that addresses the one significant negative in VS2010, which is the new help system that they’re using. It lacks an index, and the searching functionality leaves a lot to be desired (for example, there’s no ability to filter search results). This addon adds a panel that provides an index that integrates directly into the IDE, and is really something that should have been included with the product. One caveat is that this addon won’t work with the Express editions because they don’t support tool extensions. The Help Viewer power tool allows you to configure the VIsual Studio 2010 help to use a standalone viewer, rather than your browser. Keep in mind that if you want to make full use of the Help Viewer power tool, make sure that you install all of the Visual Studio documentation locally.