Notes form Visual Studio 2010 At the Movies event (Part 2)

Well, finally I get to write the rest of my notes on this event. If you haven’t read the first part of the notes, go here https://ricardocovo.wordpress.com/2010/04/26/notes-form-visual-studio-2010-at-the-movies-event-part-1/.

Visual Studio 2010 (again..)

Before we continue with the new topics, let me comment on a couple points I forgot on part one.

Extension Gallery

It is now simpler than ever to extend VS2010 functionality. On the Start Page, you will find a link to the extension gallery where you will be able to download extensions both free and commercial.

I already used it, I was able to find a OpenId template from the gallery, installed it and used it immediately.

Code Snippets Usage and Management

I’ve never used the code snippets before and now I am addicted. For Web Page development it makes it very easy to work on the Source view without having to switch to the Design view, which I find saves me a ton of time.

Code snippets are really easy to use. For a sample type this on an ASPX page on vs2010: updatepanel+TAB. The entire update panel tag gets generated and you simply have to fill the extra information.

But it gets better/smarter. if you do: requiredfieldvalidator+TAB, it creates the required field validator tag, but if it is right after a text box, it actually fills in the ControlToValidate property… Sweet!

Now, if you want to change the keywords, simply go to “Tools–>Code Snippet Manager…” and update whatever you need, or create new snippets.

Test Manager

The installation of VS2010 now installs Microsoft Test Manager 2010. I do have to say, that it seems to require Team Foundation Server (TFS), which means I couldn’t really try it.

From the demonstration, this tools is pretty powerful, it allows recording, and re-running the test cases is pretty simple. There are also plenty of new templates to help jump-start the test case creation process.

I am not in QA, so unfortunately that was the extend of my notes on this subject. Although I do have to say, this was also the shorter presentation, only around 15 min.

Integration With Share Point

Right up front I have to say I am not a Share Point Development; the presenter said at the begginig somethign along these lines: “… if you are not a share point developer, be glad that you missed all the previous versions …”.

Apparently, integration with Share Point has not been the easiest thing before; but from what I can see, VS2010 integrates with Share Point 2010 very naturally. You could develop for previous versions of Share Point if required, but the new integration features mostly target the new version.

We were shown how to create web parts in 5 mins; connecting to local or external resources, such as web services and databases.

But the coolest thing I saw, was how to consume data from share point from external applications. From what I’ve heard this was not too easy before; but now, most of the Share Point data is exposed via RESTful services.

ASP.Net Development

JQuery & Ajaxtoolkit

Apparenty, Microsoft is getting behind jQuery. Although the Ajaxtoolkit will still be supported and improved, MS has decided to put support jQuery rather than developing it’s own javascript library.

This is of course a two way street. Microsoft will support jQuery, but jQuery will start to provide better support to ASP.Net and the ajaxtoolkit.

Client ID Improvements

We have all had issues with the Client ID… ASP.Net automatically generates a client id for all your server controls. The problem is that those ids are usually built based on the location of the control in the page, and can be very long as they include the names of all the containers above it.

Now you have a bit more control over the client id, making it more predictable. There is a new property called “ClientIDMode”, that will give you the chance to decide how the id is rendered. For more info on this, you can go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.ui.control.clientidmode.aspx

Rewrite URL (Routing)

Your urls have to be SEO compliant, right? Usually that means that you have to download a 3rd party URL Rewriter. Well, now there is a new way of doing it and they are calling it Routing. Here is a nice sample from Scott Gu’s blog: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/10/13/url-routing-with-asp-net-4-web-forms-vs-2010-and-net-4-0-series.aspx

Meta Tags

They made it easier to create the page Meta Tags:

Page.MetaDescription
Page.MetaKeyword

Do I need to say more?

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Well, this entry got long as well. I hope this gives you an insight of what was discuss in the event and what features are new on VS2010.

I recommend the following series from ScottGu: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/08/25/vs-2010-and-net-4-series.aspx