Visual Basic and .Net News and Resources
With the release of a new feature pack for Visual C++ 2008, developers can now write applications that feature the Office 2007 appearance, a Microsoft senior executive announced this week. At the same time, the company also discontinued support for its aging Visual Basic 6 integrated development environment, or IDE — to the dismay of some die-hard users.
“I am pleased to announce that the Visual C++ 2008 Feature Pack has shipped,” S. Somasegar, senior vice president of Microsoft’s developer division, said on his blog this week.
“The Feature Pack provides several exciting features for C++ developers, such as a major update to MFC [Microsoft Foundation Classes] and an implementation of TR1 [Technical Report 1],” the post said.
The MFC gives C++ users access to the Windows programming interfaces, while TR1 is a set of suggested additions to the International Organization for Standardization’s C++ standard. Using the newly added MFC components, “developers can create applications with the ‘look and feel’ of Microsoft’s most popular products — Microsoft Office, Visual Studio and Internet Explorer,” his posting continued.
Read the rest at InternetNews
While Microsoft’s announcement yesterday that it will publish key APIs and share its communications protocols was met with skepticism by the European Commission and other critics, .NET developers we talked with welcomed the step that Redmond had defiantly resisted until now.Microsoft said it is moving quickly to release the APIs and other documentation of Vista, Windows Server, and SQL Server.
As word of Microsoft’s announcement spread last night in New York during the local NYC.NET Developer Group meeting, attendees applauded the company’s moves.
“I think it’s going to go a long way, I hope so,” said Michelle Cmorey, division director for application development services at Robert Half International, during opening remarks at the meeting. “I think it makes Microsoft’s products more marketable, and I think that it makes your skills more marketable as well.”
Read the rest at news source ENT News.
This CTP enables developers to use Visual Studio 2008 with SQL Server 2008 Nov CTP.
This CTP resolves a problem that when you try to open a database connection to SQL Server 2008 by using Visual Studio 2008 design tools, you may receive the following error message:
“This server version is not supported. Only servers up to Microsoft SQL Server 2005 are supported.”
SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP1 Beta release for the Windows Desktop platform to support the ADO.Net Entity Framework Beta 3 and the ADO.Net Entity Framework Tools December 2007 CTP.
SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP1 Beta release for the ADO.Net Entity Framework Beta 3 enables the following scenarios:
For more information please see the ADO.NET Entity Framework Beta 3 Documentation and ADO.NET Entity Framework Samples
Post feedback and questions to SQL Server Compact 3.5 MSDN Forum and ADO.NET MSDN Forum
For tips and tricks visit SQL Server Compact blog and ADO.Net team blog
Download Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP1 Beta for ADO.Net Entity Framework Beta 3
The latest version of Microsoft® Visual Studio® includes a lot of new treats for mobile developers. In addition to new debugging tools and emulators, it includes the Windows® Mobile 5 SDK, .NET® Compact Framework 3.5, and SQL® Server Compact Edition 3.5 out of the box, without additional installs. This walkthrough gives you the code and assets for a fully functional Hangman-style game called “W80 Words” (weighty words), which takes advantage of the new platform and coding environment.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 includes a lot of useful features for mobile developers, especially those of the database persuasion. On the one hand, you have the latest and greatest version 3 emulators, Windows Mobile 5 libraries and project templates pre-installed, and unit testing for mobile. (See the Windows Mobile Team Blog for an overview.) On the other hand, you have LINQ, a new syntax for working directly with datasets. But what is the sound of two hands clapping without touching? That’s right—silence.
Here’s the scoop on LINQ for mobile: technically, LINQ works with .NET Compact Framework 3.5, though with limitations. According to MSDN you get standard query operators, LINQ to DataSet, and LINQ to XML. However, the more useful LINQ to SQL designer is not supported in SQL Server Compact Edition 3.5 (see this thread). Nor will you find any LINQ objects available in your mobile project, despite having a System.Linq reference added by default. In fact, I can find neither details nor code samples regarding LINQ for Mobile on the Internet. Nor can I get any additional information from the fine folks at Microsoft.
Read the rest at Devx
Microsoft made good on its promise to offer .Net Framework 3.5 source code this week, three months after Scott Guthrie, a general manager within the Microsoft Developer division, posted Microsoft’s intent on his blog. The source code to classes such as System, IO, Windows.Forms, and others is now viewable from within Visual Studio. When the announcement was first made, however, some developers viewed it as a Pandora’s Box because the source code would be released under a “Reference” license, which meant developers could view the code but not use or modify it. On Wednesday Guthrie revealed a small change in the licensing which addresses those concerns:
“We made a small change to the license to specifically call out that the license does not apply to users developing software for a non-Windows platform that has ‘the same or substantially the same features or functionality’ as the .NET Framework,” he wrote. “If the software you are developing is for Windows platforms, you can look at the code, even if that software has ‘the same or substantially the same features or functionality’ as the .NET Framework.”
You can read the rest here.
The Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003 SDK Documentation provides documentation for building custom Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) applications that run on Live Communications Server 2003.
The Live Communications Server 2003 SDK Documentation is designed to assist developers who are building custom SIP applications for Live Communications Server 2003, and also to assist administrators who want to manage Live Communications Servers using Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) applications.
Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1 provides cumulative roll-up updates for customer reported issues found after the release of Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. In addition, this release provides security improvements, and prerequisite feature support for .NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 1, and .NET Framework 3.5.
Important: