VS2008 finally hit RTM tonight which is good news as the betas have been so much more stable than VS2005 was at the same point. One of the best features (from an ISV perspective) is multi-targetting where each project can specify which version of the .NET Framework to work with (although not to SP level). This means we can just upgrade the IDE without converting existing project files until we’re ready. Overall the IDE and packaging tidy up a lot of loose ends and I think this is a very worthwhile update nowithstanding any language enhancements there are.
One decidedly bad ommission is the lack of the WindowsMobile 6.0 SDK, with 5.0 R2 included instead. This is a terrible ommission considering how close the 6.1 SDK is now. Its easily if irritatingly fixed by downloading the 6.0 SDK’s (~700MB) but beware, make sure you get the latest refresh and not the original, get the refresh here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=06111a3a-a651-4745-88ef-3d48091a390b&displaylang=en
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If your device can recognise QR codes then below is the QR code for this site. QR codes are supposed to be barcode like images which a camera enabled mobile device can convert the image to a block of text or URL/Email etc. Unfortunately most QR reader capability is for non-WM devices but OpenNETCF have released a .NET CF library here http://www.opennetcf.com/FreeSoftware/QRCodeCF/tabid/266/Default.aspx so you could create a reader which I might do if I have time.
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There’s a very good video from ScottGu on the upcoming (ie in-development) MVC Framework. This is going to be great when its done but illustrates how fast technologies and pseudo standards change, that is if you want to keep up with them…anyway good stuff!
http://www.hanselman.com/silverlight/ScottGuAtAltnetConf
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Gosh Darn-it, just when something useful comes along you find it has a missing wheel. VSTO or more properly Visual Studio Tools for Office is a conceptually great idea to help make all the functionality of Office apps like Word or Excel usable as if they were native components in Visual Studio. So far, so good because the previous mechanism of using COM and COM shims was never very satisfactory or seamless.
Unfortunately, nothing comes without a downside and the first downside is that VSTO doesn’t support Office apps pre-version 11.0 (Office 2003). Ok, at first that seems workable since thats 4 years ago and surely people would have upgraded by now, until you discover that that has some big exceptions, proved by me identiying corporate customers still using Office 97 (on NT 4.0!).
The second gotcha is that VSTO is really very compatible between Office 11 and 12 (Office 2007), with 12 having shedloads more functionality and different interfaces, which becomes evident when you doscver that each version needs a different PIA (Primary Interop Assembly) which can’t be mixed.
This is a big downside for an ISV like me. So what can I do ? Well not much, apparently there are some bodges to get some common codebase but in reality we are left to write conditional code and essentially write two versions like this;
private void My_Addin(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
if (this.Application.Version == “11.0″)
{
// Office 2003-specific code.
}
else
{
// Office 2007-specific code.
}
}
This is inconvenient and there’s no guarantee (in fact far from it) that I won’t need a third condition for Office 14.0 next year (there’s no Office 13.0 for superstitious reasons). So how does this make me feel? it makes me feel we should just stick with COM shims because then we can support older versions, but then we lose new functionality like the Ribbon (or do it lower level) or stick with VSTO and make Office 12 our preferred target. No surprise which one MS want us to do! Gosh Darn-it, life is never easy.
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… Microsoft keynote that demos something fantastic using one line of code I’d be rich! This time it was the turn of TechEd 2007 where we were shown a single line of code added to Outlook using Beta 1 of Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas) and VSTO which highlighted an incoming mail from a salesperson which then allowed you to link to Sharepoint and analyze their sales figures.
All very impressive, but as usual, hides the hundreds if not thousands of lines of code which had to be written on the backend which made the one line of code relevant to the demo.
Of course the impact is there but as usual the reality is far more mundane and complex. I mean if it wasn’t then ‘The Last One’ (TLO) would have made programmers redundant years ago. For those who don’t remember, TLO (circa 1982) would generate a program from a simple business spec, generating thousands of lines of GWBASIC code which would be the answer to your business problem. Of course not only was it too lofty and aspiration, but the code never worked anyway… not like our PowerPoint compiler! (http://www.altaVENTE.com)
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