Introducing Visual Studio 2005

Microsoft has finally released Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1. In

fact, developers were eagerly waiting for the same. Prior to this release,

Microsoft had released several preview editions and developers (including beta

testers) had got a chance to explore the product and provide feedback to

Microsoft. The current beta 1 edition seems to be very stable and if you explore

the features on it then it would be easy for you to work with its upcoming beta

2 and final edition.

Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 can be freely

downloaded by clicking

here. The product is also available in the form of CDs for those

enrolled in Microsoft's Beta Testing Program.

You can submit bug reports and other issues associated with the product

through MSDN Product

Feedback Center.You can also view submissions posted by other developers. In

this article, I will examine three of the interesting features included with

Visual Studio 2005 such as:

• Surround With

• Refactoring

• Insert Snippet

Now let us examine each of the above features in detail

Surround With






Applicability: Visual C#







The Surround With feature enables you to automatically add a portion of the
respective code syntax very easily. The main benefit of this feature is that the

relevant code will be added instantly with the help of Visual Studio .NET and

hence errors can be avoided. Your job is to dress up the blank spaces with the

work to be done.






For instance, if you would like to add a do-while loop, it can be done by
following certain simple steps






Double click the form to open the code window. Right click and select the option
Surround With from the IntelliSense option of the popup menu (See Figure 1)

Figure 1






You will view a list box with lot of options as shown in Figure 2

Figure 2






For the purpose of this article, I've selected the do statement option. Double
click on it and your code window will look like as shown below

Figure 3






You can add code snippets similar to the one shown above for almost every
important task using this feature.

Refactoring






Applicability: Visual C#







Refactoring is one of the interesting features included with Visual Studio 2005.
It enables you to automatically extract a certain portion of code snippet to a

method. For instance, this feature will be useful if you have a source code with

2000 lines and you need to extract 550 lines of code from it.






The original code will be replaced with the created method call. Have a look at
the walkthrough given below and you will understand the scene behind this cool

feature






In order to work with this feature, you need to first add some code and select
the same. Otherwise, IDE will show a message box as shown below.

Figure 4






Code Window before Refractoring

Figure 5






Right click the selected code and choose the Refractor -> Extract Method option.
You will be presented with a dialog box as shown below

Figure 6






Enter a new method name. The method is a static method and is having private
scope. Upon clicking OK, the selected code snippet will be enclosed inside the

above method signature as shown in the figure given below

Insert Snippet






Applicability — Visual Basic 2005







This feature enables you to add full code snippet to your project. In order to
see this in action, start a new Windows Application project by choosing the

Visual Basic project type from within Visual Studio 2005. Add a Button control

and double click on it to open the code window. Right click on the designer and

select Insert Snippet menu from the popup menu (See Figure 8)

Figure 8






Upon selecting the above option, an IntelliSense window pops up with various
options (See Figure 9)

Figure 9






These options enable you to add code snippets for performing a wide variety of
tasks such as Accessing Databases, Performing Math operations and much more.

Upon double clicking an option, the IDE will produce another set of IntelliSense

window as per your selection.






For the purpose of this article, I have selected Processing Folders, Drives and
Files option. You will be presented with an option box and the corresponding

code as shown in Figures 10 and 11.

Figure 10

Figure 11

Even though Visual Studio provides this useful feature, you have to sometimes

tweak the inserted code snippet to suit your requirements. You can also learn

how to achieve various tasks by studying the code provided by this

functionality.






Essential Resources





Visual Studio 2005 Beta Home





Visual Studio 2005
Product Feedback Center







MSDN Documentation for
Visual Studio 2005







The .NET
Show: Introduction to Visual Studio 2005







Visual Studio 2005 Express Beta
Products







Related Books





Introducing Microsoft
Visual Basic 2005 for Developers




Microsoft Press





Introducing Microsoft
ASP.NET 2.0




Microsoft Press





Conclusion





As you can see from the above explanations, Visual Studio 2005 greatly
simplifies the costly development time of developers than its previous versions.

There are many features available with Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 and it is not

possible to discuss all of them in an article. I suggest you to refer to the

essential resources listed above if you require further information regarding

Visual Studio 2005.







About the Author






Anand Narayanaswamy (Microsoft MVP) works as an independent consultant and runs
NetAns Technologies which provides

affordable and reliable web hosting services for the community. He also runs

Webhostinghotel.com, LearnXpress.com,

Dotnetalbum.com and regularly

contributes articles, product and book reviews for various websites. He can be

reached at ananddotnet@yahoo.co.in