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A must-have guide that covers all the new features of Visual Studio 2010

Visual Studio allows you to create and manage programming projects for the Windows platform, and the new 2010 version has undergone a major overhaul comprised of significant changes. Written by an author team of veteran programmers and developers, Professional Visual Studio 2010 gets you quickly up to speed on what you can expect from the newest version of Visual Studio.

This book's first section is dedicated to familiarizing you with the core aspects of Visual Studio 2010. Everything you need is contained in the first five chapters, from the IDE structure and layout to the various options and settings you can change to make the user interface synchronize with your own way of doing things.

From there, the remainder of the book is broken into 11 parts:

• Getting Started: In this part, you learn how to take control of your projects and organize them in ways that work with your own style.
• Digging Deeper: Though the many graphical components of Visual Studio that make a programmer's job easier are discussed in many places throughout this book, you often need help when you're in the process of actually writing code. This part deals with features that support the coding of applications such as IntelliSense, code refactoring, and creating and running unit tests In the latest version of the .NET framework, enhancements were added to support dynamic languages and move towards feature parity between the two primary .NET languages, C# and VB. This part covers changes to these languages, as well as looking at a range of features that will help you write better and more consistent code.
• Rich Client and Web Applications: For support building everything from Office add-ins to cloud applications, Visual Studio enables you to develop applications for a wide range of platforms. These two parts cover the application platforms that are supported within Visual Studio 2010, including ASP.NET and Office, WPF, Silverlight 2 and ASP.NET MVC.
• Data: A large proportion of applications use some form of data storage. Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework include strong support for working with databases and other data sources. This part examines how to use DataSets, the Visual Database Tools, LINQ, Synchronization Services and ADO.NET Entity Framework to build applications that work with data. It also shows you how you can then present this data using Reporting.
• Application Services: Through the course of building an application you are likely to require access to services that may or may not reside within your organization. This part covers core technologies such as WCF, WF, Synchronization Services and WCF RIA services that you can use to connect to these services.
• Configuration and Internationalization: The built-in support for configuration files allows you to adjust the way an application functions on the fly without having to rebuild it. Furthermore, resource files can be used to both access static data and easily localize an application into foreign languages and cultures. This part of the book shows how to use .NET configuration and resource files.
• Debugging: Application debugging is one of the more challenging tasks developers have to tackle, but correct use of the Visual Studio 2010 debugging features will help you analyze the state of the application and determine the cause of any bugs. This part examines the rich debugging support provided by the IDE.
• Build and Deployment: In addition to discussing how to build your solutions effectively and getting applications into the hands of your end users, this part also deals with the process of upgrading your projects from previous versions.
• Customizing and Extending Visual Studio: If the functionality found in the previous part isn't enough to help you in your coding efforts, Microsoft has made Visual Studio 2010 even more extensible. This part covers the automation model, how to write add-ins and macros, and then how to use a new extensibility framework, MEF, to extend Visual Studio 2010.
• Visual Studio Ultimate: The final part of the book examines the additional features only available in the Premium and Ultimate versions of Visual Studio 2010. In addition, you'll also learn how the Team Foundation Server provides an essential tool for managing software projects.

Though this breakdown of the Visual Studio feature set provides the most logical and easily understood set of topics, you may need to look for specific functions that will aid you in a particular activity. To address this need, references to appropriate chapters are provided whenever a feature is covered in more detail elsewhere in the book.

Professional Visual Studio 2010 is for all developers new to Visual Studio as well as those programmers who have some experience but want to learn about features they may have previously overlooked.

If you are familiar with the way previous versions of Visual Studio worked, you may want to skim over Part I, which deals with the basic constructs that make up the user interface, and move on to the remainder of the book where the new features found in Visual Studio 2010 are discussed in detail. While you may be familiar with most of Part I, it is worth reading this section in case there are features of Visual Studio 2010 that you haven't seen or used before.

If you're just starting out, you'll greatly benefit from the first part, where basic concepts are explained and you're introduced to the user interface and how to customize it to suit your own style.

This book was written to introduce you to the features and capabilities that ASP.NET 4 offers, as well as to give you an explanation of the foundation that ASP.NET provides. We assume you have a general understanding of Web technologies, such as previous versions of ASP.NET, Active Server Pages 2.0/3.0, or JavaServer Pages. If you understand the basics of Web programming, you should not have much trouble following along with this book's content.

If you are brand new to ASP.NET, be sure to check out Beginning ASP.NET 4: In C# and VB by Imar Spaanjaars (Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2010) to help you understand the basics.

In addition to working with Web technologies, we also assume that you understand basic programming constructs, such as variables, For Each loops, and object-oriented programming.

You may also be wondering whether this book is for the Visual Basic developer or the C# developer. We are happy to say that it is for both! When the code differs substantially, this book provides examples in both VB and C#.

This book explores the 4 release of ASP.NET. It covers each major new feature included in ASP.NET 4 in detail. The following list tells you something about the content of each chapter.

• Chapter 1, ″Application and Page Frameworks.″ The first chapter covers the frameworks of ASP.NET applications as well as the structure and frameworks provided for single ASP.NET pages. This chapter shows you how to build ASP.NET applications using IIS or the built-in Web server that comes with Visual Studio 2010. This chapter also shows you the folders and files that are part of ASP.NET. It discusses ways to compile code and shows you how to perform cross-page posting. This chapter ends by showing you easy ways to deal with your classes from within Visual Studio 2010.

• Chapters 2, 3, and 4. These three chapters are grouped together because they all deal with server controls. This batch of chapters starts by examining the idea of the server control and its pivotal role in ASP.NET development. In addition to looking at the server control framework, these chapters delve into the plethora of server controls that are at your disposal for ASP.NET development projects. Chapter 2, ″ASP.NET Server Controls and Client-Side Scripts,″ looks at the basics of working with server controls. Chapter 3, ″ASP.NET Web Server Controls,″ covers the controls that have been part of the ASP.NET technology since its initial release and the controls that have been added in each of the ASP.NET releases. Chapter 4, ″Validation Server Controls,″ describes a special group of server controls: those for validation.

• Chapter 5, ″Working with Master Pages.″ Master pages provide a means of creating templated pages that enable you to work with the entire application, as opposed to single pages. This chapter examines the creation of these templates and how to apply them to your content pages throughout an ASP.NET application.

• Chapter 6, ″Themes and Skins.″ The Cascading Style Sheet files you are allowed to use in ASP.NET 1.0/1.1 are simply not adequate in many regards, especially in the area of server controls. This chapter looks at how to deal with the styles that your applications require and shows you how to create a centrally managed look-and-feel for all the pages of your application by using themes and the skin files that are part of a theme.

• Chapter 7, ″Data Binding.″ One of the more important tasks of ASP.NET is presenting data, and this chapter looks at the underlying capabilities that enable you to work with the data programmatically before issuing the data to a control.

• Chapter 8, ″Data Management with ADO.NET.″ This chapter presents the ADO.NET data model provided by ASP.NET, which allows you to handle the retrieval, updating, and deleting of data quickly and logically.

• Chapter 9, ″Querying with LINQ.″ The.NET Framework 4 includes a nice access model language called LINQ. LINQ is a set of extensions to the .NET Framework that encompass language-integrated query, set, and transform operations. This chapter introduces you to LINQ and how to effectively use this feature in your Web applications today.

• Chapter 10, ″Working with XML and LINQ to XML.″ The .NET Framework and ASP.NET 4 have many capabilities built into their frameworks that enable you to easily extract, create, manipulate, and store XML. This chapter takes a close look at the XML technologies built into ASP.NET and the underlying .NET Framework.

• Chapter 11, ″Introduction to the Provider Model.″ The provider model is built into ASP.NET to make the lives of developers so much easier and more productive than ever before. This chapter gives an overview of this provider model and how it is used throughout ASP.NET 4.

• Chapter 12, ″Extending the Provider Model.″ After an introduction of the provider model, this chapter looks at some of the ways to extend the provider model found in ASP.NET 4. This chapter also reviews a couple of sample extensions to the provider model.

• Chapter 13, ″Site Navigation.″ Most developers do not simply develop single pages—they build applications. One of the application capabilities provided by ASP.NET 4 is the site navigation system covered in this chapter.

• Chapter 14, ″Personalization.″ Developers are always looking for ways to store information pertinent to the end user. After it is stored, this personalization data has to be persisted for future visits or for grabbing other pages within the same application. The ASP.NET team developed a way to store this information—the ASP.NET personalization system. The great thing about this system is that you configure the entire behavior of the system from the web.config file.

• Chapter 15, ″Membership and Role Management.″ This chapter covers the membership and role management system developed to simplify adding authentication and authorization to your ASP.NET applications. This chapter focuses on using the web.config file for controlling how these systems are applied, as well as on the server controls that work with the underlying systems.

• Chapter 16, ″Portal Frameworks and Web Parts.″ This chapter explains Web Parts—a way of encapsulating pages into smaller and more manageable objects.

• Chapter 17, ″HTML and CSS Design with ASP.NET.″ Visual Studio 2010 places a lot of focus on building a CSS-based Web. This chapter takes a close look at how you can effectively work with HTML and CSS design for your ASP.NET applications.

• Chapter 18, ″ASP.NET AJAX.″ AJAX is an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. In Web application development, it signifies the capability to build applications that make use of the XMLHttpRequest object. Visual Studio 2010 contains the ability to build AJAX-enabled ASP.NET applications from the default install of the IDE. This chapter takes a look at this way to build your applications.

• Chapter 19, ″ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit.″ Along with the capabilities to build ASP.NET applications that make use of the AJAX technology, a series of controls is available to make the task rather simple. This chapter takes a good look at the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit and how to use this toolkit with your applications today.

• Chapter 20, ″Security.″ This chapter discusses security beyond the membership and role management features provided by ASP.NET 4. This chapter provides an in-depth look at the authentication and authorization mechanics inherent in the ASP.NET technology, as well as HTTP access types and impersonations.

• Chapter 21, ″State Management.″ Because ASP.NET is a request-response–based technology, state management and the performance of requests and responses take on significant importance. This chapter introduces these two separate but important areas of ASP.NET development.

• Chapter 22, ″Caching.″ Because of the request-response nature of ASP.NET, caching (storing previous generated results, images, and pages) on the server becomes rather important to the performance of your ASP.NET applications. This chapter looks at some of the advanced caching capabilities provided by ASP.NET, including the SQL cache invalidation feature which is part of ASP.NET 4. This chapter also takes a look at object caching and object caching extensibility.

• Chapter 23, ″Debugging and Error Handling.″ This chapter tells you how to properly structure error handling within your applications. It also shows you how to use various debugging techniques to find errors that your applications might contain.

• Chapter 24, ″File I/O and Streams.″ This chapter takes a close look at working with various file types and streams that might come into your ASP.NET applications.

• Chapter 25, ″User and Server Controls.″ Not only can you use the plethora of server controls that come with ASP.NET, but you can also use the same framework these controls use and build your own. This chapter describes building your own server controls and how to use them within your applications.

• Chapter 26, ″Modules and Handlers.″ This chapter looks at two methods of manipulating the way ASP.NET processes HTTP requests: HttpModule and HttpHandler. Each method provides a unique level of access to the underlying processing of ASP.NET, and each can be a powerful tool for creating Web applications.

• Chapter 27, "ASP.NET MVC." ASP.NET MVC is the latest major addition to ASP.NET and has generated a lot of excitement from the development community. ASP.NET MVC supplies you with the means to create ASP.NET using the Model-View-Controller models that many developers expect. ASP.NET MVC provides developers with the testability, flexibility, an...

Delve into the features, principles, and pillars of the ASP.NET MVC framework-deftly guided by Web development luminary Dino Esposito. ASP.NET MVC forces developers to think in terms of distinct components-model, view, controller-that make it easier to manage application complexity. Plunge into the framework's internal mechanics and gain a practical, what-why-how perspective behind each ASP.NET MVC building block. You'll understand how and when to use this programming model as an alternative to Web Forms-to gain full control of HTML, simplify testing and extensibility, and design better Web sites and experiences. As always, Esposito provides the detailed, insightful guidance and illustrative code samples you need to get productive quickly.

This book uses a real-world case-study project to teach you how to manage software configuration efficiently using Visual SourceSafe 2005, Microsoft's Software Configuration Management (SCM) solution for independent developers and for developers working in small- and medium-sized teams. It also provides a best-practices reference on using SourceSafe 2005 to manage the software development lifecycle. This book is for .NET developers, testers and configuration managers who: Use Visual Studio .NET 2005 for building software. Want to use software configuration to manage their products in day-to-day activities. Want to improve their efficiency by learning to use the best practices with SourceSafe. Want to install, manage, and configure Visual SourceSafe 2005 for optimal operation. The book does not assume previous knowledge of Software Configuration Management or Visual SourceSafe. It takes the reader from the ground up and is a great resource for people starting to learn about this subject. Readers with previous SourceSafe experience will benefit by discovering the improved and new features in Visual SourceSafe 2005.

“Once this skill is within your everyday comfort zone, it will give your productivity a boost and increase your value to your team. I encourage you to add the techniques outlined in this book to your toolset and to use them to develop your own workbench of generative tools. In doing so, I’m confident you’ll improve your capabilities, and what’s more, have fun doing so.”

–From the Foreword by Gareth Jones, Developer Architect, Visual Studio®, Microsoft

Enlist Visual Studio’s Built-in Code Generation Tools to Write Better Software Faster

Automatic code generation can dramatically increase your productivity, improve code quality and maintainability, promote reuse, and help you extend best practices throughout your development organization. .NET and Visual Studio contain many powerful, code-generation tools--and this book shows you how to succeed with all of them. With Practical Code Generation in .NET, spend less time writing monotonous, repetitive code--leaving more time to address troublesome areas!

Microsoft MVP Peter Vogel covers code generation with Visual Studio 2010, 2008, and 2005, as well as all recent versions of .NET, including .NET 4.0. You’ll learn when enlisting code generation makes sense and how to design solutions that build on the skills and resources you already have.

Writing for experienced programmers, Vogel shows how to generate reliable code using procedural code, Visual Studio add-ins, XML, configuration files, and more--including Microsoft’s innovative CodeDOM technology for generating code in multiple languages. He brings everything together in three complete, chapter-length case studies.

Coverage includes

• Understanding the structure of .NET code-generation solutions and best practices for architecting them

• Creating Visual Studio add-ins that quickly integrate code generation into day-to-day activities

• Using objects and methods to add or remove project components

• Using text insertion to generate code using any tool--even standard string handling functions

• Working with the specific features of C#, Visual Basic .NET, and ASP.NET

• Generating more concise code with .NET’s new Text Template Transformation Toolkit (T4)

• Building code-generation solutions with Visual Studio templates, attributes, and custom tools

• Distributing code-generation solutions

This three--part article by Kaushal Sanghavi demonstrates the ways in which development environments can enhance your productivity through customizing and automating tasks and processes. In this first part of this article, which focuses on Visual Studio .NET add--ins, you'll look at the support that VS .NET provides for writing add--ins and macros that can extend and customize the development environment. In this second part, the article further demonstrates the use of VS .NET add--ins by showing you how to build two custom add--ins: one that adds an AutoSave feature to your projects, and another that synchronizes VS .NET task lists with Microsoft Outlook. In part three, Sanghavi explains how you can develop COM--based add--ins for Microsoft Office, and how you can use .NET components in these add--ins via COM Interop. You'll build an encryption add--in for Microsoft Word that uses the symmetric DES encryption algorithm to encrypt a part of a Word document based on a user--defined password.

This certification exam measures the ability to develop and implement Web-based applications with Web forms, ASP.NET, and the Microsoft .NET Framework. This exam counts as a core credit toward the new MCAD (Microsoft Certified Application Developer) certification as well as a core credit toward the existing MCSD certification. Readers preparing for this exam find our Training Guide series to be the most successful self-study tool in the market. This book is their one-stop shop because of its teaching methodology, the accompanying ExamGear testing software, and superior Web site support at www.quepublishing.com/certification. The CD features the ExamGear product (test simulation with more than 150 practice questions) and an electronic copy of the book.

Whether you're new to Visual Basic or you're upgrading to VB 2010 from an earlier version, this new edition of Murach's core VB book shows you how to develop the kind of bullet-proof Windows Forms applications that businesses rely on. Along the way, you'll learn how to quickly build database applications by using RAD features like data sources and the DataGridView control. You'll learn how to use object-oriented features like inheritance and interfaces as well as 2010 features like auto-implemented properties and collection initializers. You'll learn how to use LINQ to query data and XML to exchange data between applications. You'll learn how to take advantage of all the productivity features of Visual Studio 2010. When you re done, you'll be able to develop Windows Forms applications the way the best professionals develop them. That's why we say: No other book teaches you so much, so fast, or so thoroughly.

Essential Visual Studio 2010 Skills--Made Easy!

Endorsed by Microsoft and written by a Microsoft MVP and Visual Studio expert, this hands-on guide teaches programmers and developers new to Visual Studio 2010 how to maximize the latest release of Microsoft's flagship development environment. Microsoft Visual Studio 2010: A Beginner's Guide shows you how to build applications from the ground up. You'll also learn how to customize the integrated development environment (IDE) itself, adding your own tools that integrate with Visual Studio 2010.

XML Web services are the next logical step in the evolution of the Internet. Teach yourself how to write and deploy XML Web services for Microsoft® .NET—one step at a time—with this modular, accessible tutorial. It delivers expert, task-based instruction plus a real-world XML service example to help you apply what you already know about Microsoft Visual C#™, Microsoft Visual Basic® .NET, and object-oriented programming so that you can learn XML Web services development at your own pace. Topics covered include:

UNDERSTANDING XML WEB SERVICES

• XML Web services architecture
• XML Web services protocols
• Web Service Description Language (WSDL)
• Discovering XML Web services

BUILDING XML WEB SERVICES

• Writing .NET XML Web services
• Testing XML Web services
• Debugging XML Web services

CONSUMING XML WEB SERVICES

• Discovering XML Web services
• Generating a proxy class
• Creating clients that consume XML Web services
• Consuming XML Web services asynchronously
• Consuming XML Web services with HTTP

ADVANCED XML WEB SERVICES

• Managing XML Web service state
• Securing XML Web services
• Using data sets with XML Web services
• Using SOAP headers