Visual Studio 2008 for

Web Development

Overview of Visual Studio 2008 Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008 is the development environment for designing, developing, and testing next-generation Windows®-based solutions, Web applications, and services. By improving the development experience for Windows, the Web, mobile devices, and the 2007 Microsoft Office system, Visual Studio 2008 helps individuals and organizations rapidly create and deliver complete, connected, comprehensive, and compelling software solutions. Microsoft Visual Studio Team System expands the product line with new software tools that enable greater communication and collaboration throughout the development lifecycle. Interaction between developers and designers is enhanced with Visual Studio 2008 and Microsoft Expression® Studio.

Rapid Application DevelopmentFrom modeling to coding and debugging, Visual Studio 2008 delivers improved language, designer, and data features that will help you experience a breakthrough in productivity.

CreateOutstandingUserExperiencesVisual Studio 2008 offers developers new tools that speed creation of outstanding, highly personalized user experiences and connected applications using the latest platforms, including the Web, Windows Vista®, the 2007 Office system, Microsoft SQL Server® 2008, Windows Mobile®, and Windows Server® 2008.

Collaborate Across the Development Cycle Visual Studio 2008 enables developers, designers, testers, and project managers to work together through shared tools and process integration, which reduces the time to solution.

Visual Studio 2008 for Web Development

Break Through Web Development Challenges with Visual Studio 2008The Web has become a universal application development platform, changing the way software is delivered and used. Dynamic, message-based architectures allow applications to cross hardware and software boundaries. Creative couplings of server- and client-side functionality provide fast new ways of analyzing and visualizing information. This complex environment brings many challenges for Web developers.

New development paradigms.• Web applications are expected to cross hardware and software

boundaries.

• Web applications may have to scale to thousands or tens of thousands of simultaneous users without breaking or slowing down.

• Web applications combine server- and client-side functions.

• As they write code, developers must maintain the design integrity of projects.

A complex technology ecosystem.• The architectures of distributed systems can be dauntingly complex.

• Large and specialized development teams must collaborate effectively, use proven processes, and increase efficiency to deliver solutions on schedule and on budget.

• Multiple languages and techniques can be used to achieve a given outcome.

• Applications use one kind of language, while databases use another.

• Designers and developers must work closely together, even though their tools are often incompatible.

• Developers must maintain older applications while the tools for doing so constantly evolve.

• Cascading style sheets (CSS) have simplified some aspects of Web development, but can be complex to manage in their own right.

User expectations.• Users expect exciting, visually rich experiences.

• Users want Web applications to be faster and more responsive.

Visual Studio 2008 gives developers a complete set of tools to help them overcome these challenges and realize the promise of the Web as a platform for delivering cutting-edge applications and experiences.

KeyBenefitsofVisualStudio2008forWeb Developers • Speed development with split-view editing, improved CSS

tools, Microsoft IntelliSense® for JavaScript and XML, and inline JavaScript debugging.

• Easily develop applications that create and consume Web services using WCF.

• Drive quality early and often with integrated unit, load, and Web testing.

• Use Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) to write data queries in familiar object-oriented languages.

• Enhance collaboration among designers and developers, who can share project files between Expression Studio and Visual Studio 2008.

• Support team collaboration and productivity with Visual Studio Team System, a complete Application Lifecycle Management solution.

• Create rich, interactive applications using Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX).

• Deliver rich media across browsers and platforms with Silverlight.

VisualStudio2008WebDevelopmentExampleConsider how Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Web Development Example adds value throughout a typical Web development project. Working from site architecture plans, developers begin to code using multitargeting to select which version of the Microsoft .NET Framework they will use. As they work, they benefit from productivity- enhancing features such as JavaScript IntelliSense and inline debugging; enhanced unit testing; and improved control over CSS.

LINQ enables them to create data-driven functionality without writing SQL Server calls. They can use new AJAX functionality in Visual Studio 2008 to create a seamless user experience. With split-view editing, they can quickly switch between design and code views or see both at once. Files created by the design team in Microsoft Expression Web can be handed off to developers as-is and used directly in Visual Studio 2008. Throughout the process, designers and developers can work together toward the final product, always working on the same set of files.

MSBuild, the new build platform for Visual Studio 2008, enables the team to deploy application parts to a test server that need not be running Visual Studio. Unit test results are accessible to the whole team as Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server work items. Once the site is complete, it is moved to the quality assurance (QA) platform using scripts and load-tested using Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Test Load Agent. After QA, production engineers are notified of a new release. They initiate scripts to push the application to production servers and the site goes live.

SpeedApplicationDevelopment. Visual Studio 2008 delivers improved language, designer, editor,

and data features that help developers make productivity breakthroughs.

Maintainandbuildapplicationsonearlierversionsofthe .NETFramework. Developers must maintain older applications while the tools for doing so constantly evolve. Prior to the release of Visual Studio 2008, developers maintaining or creating applications using earlier versions of the .NET Framework had to use the corresponding version of Visual Studio, preventing them from taking advantage of advancing technology. Visual Studio 2008 includes multi-targeting, which makes targeting the .NET Framework versions 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5 as easy as selecting from a drop-down list. Visual Studio 2008 automatically excludes features not available in the target version.

Seamlesslyswitchbetweencodinganddesignwith split-view editing. With the increasingly complex visual behavior of Web sites, Web developers find themselves switching often between design and code views—an action that is much faster in Visual Studio 2008 than in previous versions. Visual Studio 2008 also features split- view editing, allowing developers to see code and design views simultaneously—and see changes in one instantly reflected in the other.

Controldatabehaviorusingobject-orientedlanguagesthroughLanguage-IntegratedQuery. Web applications can be powerful tools for viewing, manipulating, and analyzing data. However, the object-oriented languages used to write most applications and the query languages used to access and integrate data are completely different. Without a mechanism to unite the two, developers had to learn both languages or work with data specialists. In the .NET Framework 3.5, Microsoft introduces Language-Integrated Query (LINQ), a set of extensions to Microsoft Visual Basic® and Microsoft Visual C#® that enable developers to use those languages to query data of all kinds, including object collections, ADO.NET, XML data, and SQL Server databases. LINQ is integrated with Visual Studio 2008 features like IntelliSense and smart compile auto correction, making it even easier to incorporate data into Web applications.

Designcomplexsystemswitheasewithpowerfulvisualtools.The architectures of distributed systems can be dauntingly complex. In designing and validating distributed applications on the Web, architects face a bewildering array of platform, service, and application technologies that must function together as a seamless whole. Powerful designers in Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Architecture Edition enable architects to manipulate and validate system components by dragging, dropping, and connecting visual elements, giving them the freedom to experiment with multiple configurations and quickly find the best solution for the task.

Rapidlyimplementhigh-performance,service-oriented architectureswiththeWindowsCommunicationFoundation.Web applications are expected to cross hardware and software boundaries; they also combine server- and client-side functions.One of the key promises of the Web is the ability for applications on diverse platforms to communicate with one another through service-oriented architectures (SOA). Developers are expected to connect disparate systems via the Web while maintaining security, performance, and interoperability. In prior versions of Visual Studio and the .NET Framework, they would have chosen from a number of separate technologies, increasing the complexity of building and maintaining the solution. In Visual Studio 2008, the multiple message-based services of the .NET Framework are brought together in the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), enabling developers to program connected services using the familiar, object-oriented model of the .NET Framework. WCF supports industry standards for Web services messaging, metadata, security, and reliability, ensuring that developers have the resources at their disposal to meet requirements for their particular application.

UseVisualStudioproductivitytoolswithkeyWeb programminglanguages. In software development today, multiple languages and techniques can be used to achieve a given outcome. Developers can only be maximally productive in an integrated development environment (IDE) with native support for the tools they need most. Visual Studio 2008 extends productivity-enhancing IntelliSense to JavaScript and includes inline JavaScript debugging.

GaintotalcontroloverCSSpropertiesandstyleswithnew toolsinVisualStudio2008.Cascading style sheets have simplified some aspects of Web development, but can be complex to manage in their own right. They have become the industry standard for defining the presentation of HTML and XML documents. While CSS simplifies site creation and management, complex CSS hierarchies can make it difficult to identify and control the visual behavior of content. Visual Studio 2008 includes tools for revealing and controlling CSS properties down to the level of individual page elements. The CSS Properties window displays all the rules affecting a selected element, while the Properties Grid shows which of competing properties are being used or overridden. The CSS Style Manager allows developers to highlight instances of a style in a page and manipulate styles using a graphical interface.

Integrateunit,Web,andloadtestingintodevelopment workflows.Web applications may have to scale to thousands or tens of thousands of simultaneous users without breaking or slowing down. If testing tools are separate from the development environment, the goal of “early and often” quality assurance is more difficult to achieve. Visual Studio 2008 provides integrated unit testing functionality and JavaScript debugging inside the IDE to allow developers to test their own code. Visual Studio Team System 2008 Test Load Agent provides a system for accurately simulating user loads of almost any size on Web applications before deployment. It is tightly integrated with Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server, enabling team members to analyze and use test data from within Visual Studio Team System Editions or Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2008.

Enabledesignersanddeveloperstoworkonthesamefiles andcollaboratemoreeffectively.Development is closely linked with visual design in many Web software projects. The effort designers put toward creating a sophisticated user interface is wasted if developers cannot faithfully translate the design into functional code. On the other hand, if developers do not have access to a full-featured design surface, they must rely on laborious coding to manipulate visual elements. Visual Studio 2008 creates new possibilities for designer-developer collaboration through tight integration with Expression Studio. Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Studio use the same art, code, and development files without the need for conversion or translation. Project files created in Expression Web can be used directly in Visual Studio 2008. User interfaces designed in Expression Web Designer can remain intact throughout the development of application and business logic, giving the team more freedom to concentrate on end-user functionality rather than going back and forth on design changes. In addition, Visual Studio 2008 has an improved XAML editor, enabling Web developers to incorporate Microsoft Expression Design vector graphics directly into applications that use the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

CreateOutstandingUserExperiences. Today’s Web users want rich, interactive online applications.

Exceed their expectations with the Web-centric tools in Visual Studio 2008.

NewMicrosoftASP.NETfeaturesenableyoutocreateWeb applicationsthatgiveuserstheinteractiveexperiencestheydesire.Users want Web applications to be faster and more responsive. ASP.NET enables programmers to create dynamic Web applications, from Web sites to enterprise-class Web applications. The platform continues to evolve, incorporating the latest technologies for creating enhanced user experiences. For example, recent Web programming technique known as Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) enables developers to create Web applications in which the client and the server exchange small amounts of data in the background. Prior to the use of AJAX, refreshing data could require refreshing an entire page, reducing the speed, usability, and interactivity of the application. ASP.NET AJAX is integrated with the .NET Framework 3.5 release. Developing AJAX applications with Visual Studio 2008 is made much easier with the addition JavaScript IntelliSense and debugging support. Developers can choose a client-centric, server-centric, or hybrid topology, depending on the needs of the application. AJAX can be used to create dynamic application behavior, including data validation and rich user interface features like drag-and-drop and context menus.

Deliverpowerfulexperiencesacrossbrowsersandplatforms withMicrosoftSilverlight.Users expect exciting, visually rich experiences. Developers using the .NET Framework need a way to bring rich media to users across browsers and platforms in a platform-independent world. Microsoft SilverlightTM is the answer—a browser-based runtime that delivers vector graphics, video, and animation to browser-based applications. Developers can write Silverlight applications in any of the .NET-compatible languages, including Visual C# and Visual Basic. .NET Silverlight tools for Visual Studio 2008 are available as a downloadable add-on.

For more information, please visit:http://www.microsoft.com/vstudio

Part No. 098-109250