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Visual Studio 2005 Edition 20: The Best IDE for Legacy Applications



Generics have been introduced with .NET 2.0. This was a major change in the book, and the book title changed to Professional C# 2005. Starting with this edition, I changed to lead author of this great book.


And yet, if all of us in this room are .NET developers, then we are also undoubtedly Visual Studio users. I suspect some of us have been playing around with betas of Visual Studio 2005, and awaiting its official release at DevConnections in Las Vegas in a few weeks.




visual studio 2005 edition 20




Visual Studio 2005 provides Web application developers with a long list of improvements and enhancements to Web projects. As powerful as Visual Studio .NET 2002 and 2003 are, there were many complaints in the way that Web projects were handled. Visual Studio 2005 adds a significant number of new features in order to address these complaints. For those who prefer the way that Visual Studio .NET 2003 handled compilation of Web applications, see Web Application Projects.


Visual Studio 2005 removes the reliance on FrontPage Server Extensions for local projects. Visual Studio 2005 now accesses the IIS metabase directly instead of using the FrontPage Server Extensions. Visual Studio 2005 also adds support for FTP which allows for remote project access without requiring FrontPage Server Extensions.


No special configuration is required to take advantage of the ASP.NET Development Server. When a Web project that is hosted on the file system is debugged or browsed, Visual Studio 2005 will automatically start an instance of the ASP.NET Development Server on a random port to service the request.


Visual Studio 2005 does away with the project file. Instead, it reads the file and folder information directly from the disk, resulting in an accurate display of the files in your project. Because the References folder in Visual Studio 2002 and 2003 does not represent an actual folder in your Web application, Visual Studio 2005 also removes the References folder from Solution Explorer. To access the references for your project in Visual Studio 2005, you should use the Property pages for the project.


Web developers have many new options available for project creation in Visual Studio 2005. Web sites can now be created anywhere in the file system and can then be debugged or browsed using the new ASP.NET Development Server. Developers can also create new Web sites using FTP.


The ASP.NET Development Server may cause some confusion for customers. If a Web project is created on the file system in IISs directory structure (i.e. c:/inetpub/wwwroot), the Web site will still be browsed via the ASP.NET Development Server when launched from within Visual Studio 2005. Therefore, any IIS configuration (i.e. authentication methods) is not applicable.


Visual Studio 2005 introduces the option to create Web sites via FTP. When you use this option, the IDE creates the files locally in the users temp folder and then uses FTP to move the files to the FTP location.


When opening Web sites via HTTP, settings are read either from the IIS metabase (Local IIS) or using FrontPage Server Extensions (Remote Site.) If there are nested web applications, these are displayed as well with an icon identifying them as an application. If you are familiar with working with web applications in FrontPage, the behavior in Visual Studio 2005 is similar.


In Visual Studio 2002 and 2003, Web applications were compiled into one primary assembly residing in the /bin folder. In Visual Studio 2005, an App/_Code folder was added. Classes and other non-UI code are added to the App/_Code folder. When Visual Studio builds the project, all files in the App/_Code folder are compiled into a single App/_Code.dll file. The result of this change is that subsequent builds are much faster than in previous versions.


Another great enhancement to Visual Studio and the ASP.NET architecture is in the area of edit and continue. In Visual Studio 2005, developers can start debugging a project and make code changes on the project without detaching the debugger. In fact, you can literally start debugging a project, add a new class, add code to that class, add code to your page that creates a new instance of that class and execute a method of the class, all without detaching the debugger. Executing the new code is literally as easy as refreshing the browser!


The robust edit and continue functionality in ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005 is due to an architectural change for ASP.NET applications. In ASP.NET 1.x, applications created in Visual Studio 2002/2003 were compiled into a primary assembly that was stored in the /bin folder. All classes, pages, etc. for the application were compiled into that one DLL. Then at runtime, ASP.NET would compile all of the controls, markup, and ASP.NET code within pages and copy those DLLs into the ASP.NET temporary folder.


In Visual Studio 2005 using ASP.NET 2.0, the two compilation models outline above (one for Visual Studio and one for ASP.NET at runtime) have been merged into one common compilation model. That means that all compilation issues are now caught during the development stage instead of at runtime. It also allows for designer and IntelliSense support for features such as user controls and master pages.


In ASP.NET 2.0, the debug attribute is set to false by default. As you have already seen, when a developer debugs an ASP.NET application in Visual Studio 2005, they are prompted to add a web.config file with debugging enabled. Doing so incurs the same drawbacks that were present in ASP.NET 1.x, but now the developer is clearly warned that the attribute should be reset to false before moving the application to production.


The requirement for debugging in Visual Studio 2005 remotely is quite simple. You need to run msvsmon.exe on the remote server prior to debugging. You can install the Remote Debug Monitor from the Visual Studio CD or you can simply run msvsmon.exe from a share without installing anything at all on the Web server.


As we've already discussed, Visual Studio 2005 ships with a Web server called the ASP.NET Development Server. (The ASP.NET Development Server is sometimes referred to as Cassini.) This Web server is a convenient means to browse and debug Web applications running on the file system.


Although I will not be including a 20-page review of Visual Studio right here, you will find images of Visual Studio throughout the text, placed so as to advance your understanding of the topics under discussion in each chapter. When you start up Visual Studio for the first time, it displays the Start Page. (The screenshots in this book are taken from the Professional Edition of Visual Studio 2005.)


Visual Studio 2005 is the third major release of the product since .NET's initial introduction in 2002. Each release (in 2002, 2003, and 2005) corresponded to a related release of the .NET Framework (versions 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0, respectively) and of the .NET implementation of Visual Basic. The 2003 release was a relatively minor update to Visual Basic and the Framework, but the 2005 release is major. It is packed with new usability features, and comes in five delicious flavors.


I'm trying to install Visual Studio 2005 in Windows 7. When attempting to start, Windows 7 complains that Visual Studio 2005 is incompatible with Windows 7 and offers me to search online for a solution. It comes up with a link to Visual Studio 2005 SP1 for Windows Vista and Windows 7, but when I download it (VS80sp1-KB932232-X86-ENU.exe) and try to run it, it refuses to install saying that


Visual Studio 2005 is the officially-supported IDE of the Source SDK, and if all is well you won't need to do anything special to use it. If you're using Visual C++ 2005 Express or if something is awry, however, you'll need to do some work to get it up and running. This page assumes you are compiling the latest Orange Box source code.


Is it recommended to obtain the full Visual Studio 2005 Professional since it includes the Windows/Platform SDK.VCE2005 is no longer supported by or officially available from Microsoft. It can still be downloaded from Microsoft Through it might disappear sometime soon!


This error is caused by trying to build against an incompatible version of the Windows SDK/Platform SDK. When using the full version of Visual C++ 2005, your Visual C++ directories (in "Options") should not refer to any newer external SDK include/lib paths; only the ones included with the Visual C++ 2005 installation by default. Reverting the "VC++ Directories" settings to default should solve this problem.


Indicates whether or not the Web Application Project template for Visual Studio 2005 is installed on the system. This project template is available as a standalone add-in and as a part of visual Studio 2005 SP1.


All of my SSRS reports are currently on 2005 (develeoped on Visual Studio 2005). I just got access to a SSRS 2012 Report Server. I also installed SQL Server 2012 client tools and it installed Visual Studio 2010. Can I convert my SSRS 2005 reports to 2010 via Visual Studio 2010, and then deploy to the SSRS 2012 Report Server? Or do I need to install Visual Studio 2012 and convert the reports from 2005 to 2012?


I've collected the various how-tos and gotchas about using Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 with IIS 7.0 applications into two detailed articles:Using Visual Studio 2005 with IIS 7.0Using Visual Studio 2008 with IIS 7.0Be sure to check them out for detailed info on working with both local and remote IIS 7.0 applications on Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 RTM, doing local and remote debugging, and other stuff.


******************************************************************NOTE: Be sure to get the Visual Studio 2005 SP1 update if you are running Visual Studio 2005 on Vista. This update fixes a number of incompatibilities you may otherwise hit. If you have issues installing SP1, please be sure to review Heath Stewart's blog entry at -issues-with-visual-studio-2005-service-pack-1.aspx.******************************************************************* 2ff7e9595c


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