- Visual Studio 2005 Gets Its Own Toolkit for InfoPath Forms
- Should You Bother with This Beta?
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Should You Bother with This Beta?
Here and there along the way, Microsoft officials have pointed to the following as some of the key features in VS 2005:
- Complete support for the .NET Framework.
- New "host" controls, consisting of .NET extensions to native Excel and Word objects. The host controls include NamedRange and ListObject in Excel, and Bookmark and XMLNode in Word, for example.
- The ability to use the Office Task Pane through a managed Document Actions Pane.
- A Data Sources Window, for binding data from a given data source – such as a Web service, database, or business object – to managed host controls without writing code.
- The ability to use WinForm managed controls within VS 2005 solutions.
- .NET Code Access Security, which provides separate policy levels for Enterprise, Machine, User, and Application. A permission is granted only if all policy levels agree to it.
.NET developers are just starting to evaluate the Beta 2 software. Web blog entries indicate that, for some users, the InfoPath kit is only one of a long list of components in VS 2005 Beta 2.
In Internet forums, developers have pointed to a couple of kinds of glitches in Beta 2. For one thing, as Microsoft has admitted, some of the sample code is buggy. Microsoft has promised to fix those problems by the time of final release.
Also, some users would like to see better documentation for VS 2005. "I'm now working with Beta 2 for a week or two, and the one thing I noticed is that lots of Visual Studio 2005 interfaces have been moved, renamed, reshuffled, etc. Not that it's a bad thing, [because] a lot of interfaces are now in a more suitable location compared to Beta 1," said one developer.
"A problem, however, is that a lot of interfaces haven't been documented, or the documentation is 'invalidated' with the release of Beta 2. One example is a section that my working project is depending on, 'Adding Controls to Office Documents at Runtime.'"
But priorities vary widely among developers. Another blogger found the inclusion of InfoPath Toolkit in the VS 2005 Beta 2 an unexpected but pleasant discovery. He predicted that the kit will prove useful to anyone who wants to start using VS 2005 capabilities in InfoPath development — and also to anyone who'd like to start migrating existing InfoPath 2003 .NET projects.
Availability is a "Gotcha" for Some
Microsoft's release of InfoPath Toolkit 2003 for VS.NET caused a bit of a stir. Some developers encountered trouble when they tried to install the kit, although uninstalling InfoPath 2003 often turned out to do the trick.
Developers also worried about the continuing availability of the kit, since Microsoft initially announced that downloads of it would cease on February 28, 2005.
Today, though, the InfoPath kit for VS.NET is available as a free Web download to everyone, not just to MSDN subscribers.
The same can't be said yet for VS 2005 Beta 2 – and this is something not every developer is thrilled about.
"Now, if the actual real beta testers could download it on beta.microsoft.com instead of having to buy an MSDN subscription, that would be a real step forward!" wrote one evaluator in an online forum.
On the other hand, if you're a Universal MSDN subscriber, you can get a free download of VS 2005 Beta 2. Yet as we all know, subscription fees don't exactly run cheap.
Non-MSDN members who want the Beta 2 CD kit will have to get it through the mail. Plus, you'll need to pay your own freight. According to information posted on the site, "Due to customer demand, we are no longer able to offer free shipping and handling."
However, shipping and handling is probably a small price to pay for the riches you'll find inside the new InfoPath toolkit, not to mention what you'll discover in the other components of VS 2005 Beta 2. And if you're an MSDN Universal subscriber, you're already covered, anyway.
So unless your time is already crunched to the max with other projects, why not explore and enjoy?