Whidbey Tech Preview comments

I finally started playing around with the Whidbey March Tech Preview, and thought I'd blog some comments as they occurred to me.

So far I've mainly been looking at the Windows Forms enhancement. Pre-Whidbey, I always described Windows Forms as the poor stepchild of the .NET framework. It seemed like Web Forms got all the attention (and cool features). But no longer.

  • The ToolStrip/MenuStrip rocks! It's so nice to be able to put together a WinForms app that doesn't look like a circa-1994 VB app without resorting to third-party components. The “Insert Standard Items“ is a great little time-saver.

    One thing I still don't understand is why the ToolStrip/MenuBar/MenuStrip show up both on the design surface and in the component tray (it was that way pre-Whidbey as well). It seems redundant.
  • The Windows Application wizard now puts the Main in static EntryPoint class. Much better than putting on the initial form.
  • Intellisense in the watch window. Woo-hoo! Fantasic. That feature alone makes me want Whidbey.
  • The watch window now displays flag style properties like Anchor in decoded form (e.g System.Windows.Forms.AnchorStyles.Top | System.Windows.Forms.AnchorStyles.Left, rather than 5).
  • The gradient fill continues its quest for world domination. This time it's the venerable breakpoint glyph.
  • They changed the keyboard shortcut of Quick Watch. Ack! I hate having to re-learn shortcuts (or even customizing them back to what I'm used to, since I bounce between machines a lot).

    UPDATE - they also changed the keyboard shortcut for Build. Double-ack! Although I must admit that having a one key shortcut for build (F2) makes a lot more sense than the finger-twisting, carpal-tunnel-inducing Ctrl-Shift-B.

Obviously, I've only just begun scratching the surface. Those are just things that I ran across in my first half hour of twiddling.

 

4 Comments

  • Could someone please kill the gradient guy before it is to late?

    Soon there will be gradient on the background, and code in gradient in the foreground.

  • Are you sure that they changed these shortcuts, and you're just not using a different profile than you're used to? I recall having problems selecting a developer profile when starting up Whidbey, and the keyboard shortcuts were different. I wasn't too worried about it, because I figured that sort of thing cleaned up by RTM.

  • Hmm, interesting thought. However, I'm using the VCS profile, which I assume is for C# developers. It actually looks like they're moving to a different style of shortcuts entirely - fewer three-key-at-once combinations. For example, CTRL-W, J rather than CTRL-ALT-J for the Object Browser.

  • >>One thing I still don't understand is why the ToolStrip/MenuBar/MenuStrip show up both on the design surface and in the component tray (it was that way pre-Whidbey as well). It seems redundant.



    This is here so that if you're designing 10+ toolbars (like VS has) - you can set them visible=false and still get to them.

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