Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. Review on Microsoft Visual Studio

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 aims to let developers of all levels get the most out of the .NET platform. This robust development environment offers a host of options for creating standalone, mobile, and Web-based applications whether you write for a few users or a few thousand.

Visual Studio is known for combining a handful of tools and languages, including Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual C++, and even Visual J#. I did a complete install, which took about 40 minutes (with several automatic reboots along the way) and consumed over 2GB of disk space. Your mileage may vary, depending on what options and languages you choose.

The integrated development environment (IDE) looks much like its old self but has several significant productivity enhancements. The default start-up screen, a sort of mini-portal, lets you see recent projects and online content. As I soon discovered, the ability to create standalone Windows projects using Windows Forms is a major focus of the new release. With help from several dozen powerful .NET Framework 2.0 components, designing a front-end for an order-tracking database proved quick work in both Visual Basic and C#.

Easy-to-use components make connecting to data sources (whether database or remote components) simple. New wizards, many of which are accessible through smart tags, let me quickly create forms with slick navigation controls. There's also a powerful grid control for displaying multiple records. Other new .NET controls let you tap advanced OS features like Windows services, background threads, and even message queuing—without requiring a black belt in programming.

The visual designer for Windows Forms is particularly powerful. As I dragged controls on forms, guidelines popped up on the fly, making precise alignment of controls to other components a cinch, even down to single pixels. Other new wizards add a complete Windows menu and standard toolbars automatically.

The new Visual Studio's enhanced support for writing code beyond components is a major advance. For Visual Basic, the tool suggests ways to correct several hundred syntax errors and warnings. For all languages, there's an extensive library of reusable code snippets ranging from beginning programming constructs (like For loops) to sophisticated idioms that can even assist experts (for example, in working with XML). The feature can definitely speed development—especially for new users—since you can drag snippets right into the code window. You can also define and reuse your own snippets.

New refactoring support (for changing names and moving code around class libraries) is a boon for users who are more advanced, and brings Visual Studio up to speed with its Java competitors, which have long supported the capability. I did encounter one small problem upgrading legacy projects from Visual Studio 2003. An upgrade wizard correctly brought individual source files into the new version, but I had to tweak code and project settings occasionally to work with new .NET Framework 2.0 conventions.

For at least a decade, distributing standalone Visual Basic programs has been a major problem. Visual Studio attempts to solve this once and for all with its new OneClick deployment, which automates the publishing of applications (in any .NET language), letting users install the software, thus minimizing the impact of software rollouts on IT.

In theory, users can point to a URL, and the installer, which supports code-signing for improved security, will check automatically for the prerequisites (like the .NET Framework itself). The process worked fine in my limited testing. But making sure security and policy settings work in the field is tricky due to the proliferation of custom software and versions of .NET components.

I also built a simple mobile application using the same IDE and tools. Visual Studio emulates the look and feel of today's Pocket PC and Smartphone devices and includes real-time debugging. A separate add-on, Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office, even lets developers target custom-built Microsoft Office add-ins and companion programs from within the IDE. There's no specific support for Windows Vista here, though all applications built with this tool will work with the upcoming OS.

For Web development, Visual Studio's Visual Web Designer isn't nearly as visual a tool as its Windows Forms counterpart. For one, you won't find the slick new alignment guides that are in Windows Forms. While you can import and use existing cascading stylesheets, creating new ones is difficult because you must do so one definition at a time. Real-world Web development teams will often divide work between the visual design and the script coding behind it. Visual Studio doesn't yet have the separation of layers and visual smarts that would make a tool like Macromedia Dreamweaver obsolete.

That said, the new Web tools let you define and reuse master pages, and those can contain other content—a boon for real-world development. I used the feature to define and reuse menus, navigation, and standard headers and footers for multiple pages in a Web-based order-tracking app. Moreover, the library of ASP.NET Web controls is excellent. Wizards for creating a database form and grid work just fine. Built-in support for displaying multiple pages of records, sorting columns, and even selecting records is well implemented, though control over visual styles can be tricky.

In a major improvement for Web development, Microsoft added several new login-management controls that have new components for login screens, retrieving forgotten passwords, and even basic status (showing a user's login name in your pages, for example). The new Visual Studio not only simplifies security, it also includes powerful ASP.NET 2.0 configuration tools for defining groups and logins, assigning permissions, and configuring Web applications. By default, this user management runs against an SQL Server Express database. The ability to manage users in even the simplest Web application is a big plus. Of course, you can deploy Web applications easily to existing servers from within the IDE, as with previous versions.

While Java developers have several strong tools and different approaches to Java and JSP development to choose from, Windows developers must still largely rely on Microsoft's offerings. Fortunately Visual Studio continues to impress with a well-rounded portfolio of tools for the Windows .NET platform. This release can boost the productivity of anyone who writes .NET code on a regular basis.

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