Develop smart client applications
Visual Studio 2008 adds ClickOnce support for the Firefox browser and provides location-independent signing and customer branding.
By taking advantage of the 2007 Office System as a development platform, designers can leverage the look and feel of both Office and SharePoint to create familiar, intuitive UIs. Developers can then use Visual Studio Tools for Office to produce the UIs in their solutions quickly and easily. Visual Studio 2008 also provides developers with support for building native C++ applications that use the Microsoft Office 2007 UI style, including the Ribbon Bar, Ribbon Status Bar and Mini-toolbar.
Developers can use the same user profile and login services for their client applications as for their Web applications. This enables customers to use one method of back-end storage for user personalisation and authentication, regardless of the application type.
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition - a free, easy-to-use, lightweight, and embeddable version of SQL Server 2005 for developing desktop and mobile applications. SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition, the next version of SQL Server Mobile, extends the SQL Server Mobile technology to the desktop.
Finally, developers using Visual Studio 2008 can leverage service-oriented architectures (SOAs) and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) to build mobile device client applications that work in partially connected environments. These applications can send data to and receive data from a server, even if the device disconnects or roams.
Create Microsoft Office applications
Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) is fully integrated into Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition. The tools in Visual Studio enable developers to create both application-level and document-level managed-code customizations behind 2007 Office system applications quickly and easily.
Full support for ClickOnce deployment of all Office customizations and applications gives developers and administrators the right tools and framework for easy deployment and maintenance of their Office solutions.
Build Windows Vista applications
Incorporate new Windows Presentation Foundation features into both existing Windows Forms applications and new applications. Developers can also move their applications to the new Windows Vista look and feel easily with enhancements to the Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC) and Visual C++.
A number of the Windows Vista look and feel features are available simply by recompiling an MFC application. Deeper integration that requires more coding or design work is also simplified with Visual Studio’s integrated support for the Windows Vista native APIs.
Handle data more productively
Using LINQ, developers can write queries natively in C# or Visual Basic, without needing to use specialised languages such as SQL and XPath.
LINQ to SQL - a run-time infrastructure for managing relational data as objects without losing the ability to query - simplifies the construction of data driven Web sites.
Enable new Web experiences
Developers can use RAD tools to quickly and easily create client connections and proxies to existing services, and test them without needing to write code. In addition, developers can use the same techniques and tools for consuming WCF services, no matter where they are located.
Build client-centric Web applications that integrate with any back-end data provider, run within any modern browser, and have complete access to ASP.NET application services and the Microsoft platform.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)
Visual Studio 2008 provides a full suite of tools for source control, test-data generation and testing, rename refactoring, and a deployment solution that includes visual diff/merge and deploy-script generation.
Visual Studio 2008 improves on existing load-testing capabilities as well, by simplifying the load-testing interface and providing a multiple-machine graph view that displays the test results, performance, and health of all the machines under test.
A new area of support in Visual Studio is the ability to drive system performance tuning and diagnostics through the Visual Studio test tools. This enables developers to run profiling during tests.
Data at your fingertips
Visual Studio 2008 revolutionises the way developers interact with their data. With the introduction of Language Integrated Query (LINQ), you can now deal with data of all types with a consistent approach and perform data access with new data designers. LINQ makes data access easier for developers through a set of extensions to the C# and Visual Basic programming languages as well as the Microsoft .NET Framework. These extensions provide integrated querying for objects, databases and XML data. Using LINQ, you will be able to write queries natively in C# or Visual Basic without having to use specialised languages, such as SQL and XPath. Building data-driven applications has never been easier.
Give your applications a facelift
For the first time ever developers can use the latest version of Visual Studio to build and enhance applications built on previous versions of the .NET Framework. Visual Studio 2008 will adjust available project templates, toolbox controls, and IntelliSense to match the version of the .NET Framework (2.0, 3.0, or 3.5) that a developer chooses to target. Visual Studio makes it easy for you to extend these applications to deliver high quality user experiences. For example, enhancements to the Windows Forms designer enable the creation of applications that leverage Windows Forms, .NET Framework 3.5, and XAML in one application.
Free your inner designer
In addition to the design surfaces in Visual Studio, user interface designers can use familiar tools like the Microsoft Expression Suite to manipulate layouts, controls, and data binding. The solution files generated by the Expression tools can be opened and edited in Visual Studio. Designers and developers will also be able to build libraries of common user interface designs, formats and elements that can be easily managed and reused.
Harness the power of Microsoft Office
With Visual Studio 2008 developers can easily target the more than 500 million users of Microsoft Office while using the same managed code skills that they’ve developed for writing Microsoft Windows applications or ASP.NET applications. As an integrated component of Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition, Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) enables developers to customise Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Visio, InfoPath, and Project to improve end user productivity. Whether building Office UI-based workflow solutions, custom add-ins, or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server solutions, Visual Studio provides the tools to give the developer a RAD development experience.
Stand out with Windows Vista
Visual Studio is the ideal environment for building applications that have the Windows Vista look and feel. Development teams of any size building applications targeting the next generation user experience will be able to create, edit, debug, and deploy Windows Presentation Foundation applications in Visual Studio 2008. Visual Studio enables a developer building a WPF application to edit XAML directly (with IntelliSense support) or create the user interface through the new visual designers. A change made to the layout of an application through one of these tools is reflected immediately in the other. Additionally, Visual Studio provides support for taking advantage of more than 8,000 new native APIs in Windows Vista.
Developers building distributed applications will find that creating and consuming web services with Windows Vista technology is a great experience. Visual Studio makes it easy for you to implement a Web service using Windows Workflow Foundation. You can test this service without writing a single line of code and consume or expose this service from an existing workflow.
Build interactive Web experiences
The Microsoft Web platform is an end-to-end offering for designing, developing, and hosting applications on the Web. Visual Studio 2008 provides tools that span the entire platform from the secure, reliable, and extensible infrastructure of IIS, through the amazing client-side experience of Silverlight, and everything in between. Developers will be able to take advantage of rich client-side and server-side frameworks to easily build client-centric Web applications. These applications can integrate with any backend data provider, run within any modern browser and have complete access to ASP.NET application services and the Microsoft platform.
Expand the team
With Visual Studio Team System 2008 you can integrate new team members into the software development life cycle. Database professionals can create database projects that are integrated into Team Foundation Server’s version control, test stored procedures, generate test data, refactor schemas, and more. Visual Studio makes the integration of designers into the development process easier. Designers can use familiar tools like the Microsoft Expression Studio to create user interfaces and produce files that developers can work with directly in Visual Studio.
Focus on quality
As modern software projects become complex, attention is sometimes shifted away from product quality as the team is focused on driving the project to completion. At times it appears that the forces of product quality and project completion are pulling in opposite directions. Visual Studio 2008 provides the tools to make both of these goals attainable. In response to customer demand, Visual Studio now features improved unit testing, web/load testing, and code profiling tools.
For developers practicing test-driven development, unit tests now run faster whether they’re executed from the IDE or from the command-line. Test inheritance allows users to reuse inherited methods and usability improvements enable users to execute a test directly from its definition.
A new area of support in Visual Studio is the ability to drive system performance tuning and diagnostics through the Visual Studio test tools. This enables developers to run profiling during tests, so that they can run load and test procedures against a system, see how it behaves, and use integrated tools to profile, debug and tune.