Title Details

István Novák is a Microsoft MVP in Visual C# and an associate of Grepton, a Hungarian IT services company.

András Velvárt is a Silverlight MVP, regular speaker at conferences, and the owner of Response Ltd., a consulting and WPF/Silverlight development company in Hungary.

Adam Granicz is the CEO of IntelliFactory, a leading provider of F# training, development, and consulting services. He is the coauthor of two F# books and a regular speaker at conferences.

INTRODUCTION xxxiii

PART I: VISUAL STUDIO

CHAPTER 1: HISTORY OF VISUAL STUDIO 3

Roots 4

Visual Studio.NET 2002 and 2003 5

Visual Studio 2005 7

Visual Studio 2008 8

Visual Studio 2010 10

Summary 13

CHAPTER 2: VISUAL STUDIO UI ENHANCEMENTS 15

Basic IDE Overview 15

Exploring New Daily Development Features 20

Exploring the Visual Designers 25

New Tools for Architects 27

Summary 29

CHAPTER 3: VISUAL STUDIO CODE SNIPPETS 31

Understanding Code Snippets 32

Creating Code Snippets 38

Managing Code Snippets 51

Advanced Code Snippet Features 56

Snippet Editors 59

Summary 63

CHAPTER 4: VISUAL STUDIO TEMPLATES 65

The Role of Templates 66

Creating Templates 70

Template Storage Structure 81

Customizing Templates 98

Deploying Templates 110

Summary 125

CHAPTER 5: GETTING THE MOST OUT OF THE IDE 127

Window Management 128

Customizing Menus and Toolbars 138

IDE Configuration 145

Reducing Efforts with Keyboard Shortcuts 155

Custom Start Pages 162

Customizing the Toolbox 186

Visual Studio Gallery 193

Summary 198

CHAPTER 6: VISUAL STUDIO EXTENSIBILITY 201

The Visual Studio Shell and Packages 202

Extensibility Out of the Box 204

Extensions with Visual Studio SDK 210

Creating Visual Studio Macros 213

Creating Visual Studio Add-Ins 229

Visual Studio Packages in a Nutshell 242

Extending the New Editor 255

Summary 275

PART II: .NET 4

CHAPTER 7: .NET FRAMEWORK VERSION HISTORY 279

Before the .NET Framework 279

The Origin and Goals of the .NET Framework 282

Evolution of the .NET Framework 283

.NET Framework Architecture 289

Main Benefits of the .NET Framework 293

Summary 294

CHAPTER 8: MODERN UI FRAMEWORKS (WPF AND SILVERLIGHT) 297

The Importance of User Experience 297

Developers Are from Vulcan, Designers Are from Venus 299

A New Generation of Presentation Frameworks 301

The Ten Pillars of Silverlight 303

Windows Presentation Foundation 359

Choosing Between WPF and Silverlight 366

Designer - Developer Cooperation in Silverlight and WPF 367

Summary 373

CHAPTER 9: WINDOWS COMMUNICATION FOUNDATION (WCF) 375

WCF Versus ASMX Web Services 375

A Quick Look at SOA 376

Building Blocks of the WCF Architecture 378

Getting Started With WCF 381

Working with an Ajax-Enabled WCF Service 392

REST and WCF 394

Implementing a WCF Service Declaratively 394

Summary 398

CHAPTER 10: ENHANCEMENTS TO THE .NET CORE FRAMEWORK 399

Changes in Common Language Run-time 400

Type Equivalence 411

Parallel Computing 415

Code Contracts 455

Managed Extensibility Framework 463

Summary 487

CHAPTER 11: ENHANCEMENTS TO THE .NET WORKFLOW FRAMEWORK 489

An Introduction to WF 4.0 490

Creating Flowcharts and Coded Workflows 499

Workflow Architecture 509

Workflow Activity Library 517

Using the Compensating Transaction Model 527

Persistence and Human Interactions 532

Workflow Services 551

Summary 562

CHAPTER 12: ENHANCEMENTS TO THE .NET DATA FRAMEWORK 563

Language Integrated Query (LINQ) 563

Parallel LINQ (PLINQ) 572

Entity Framework 573

The Entity Data Source Control 579

Choosing Between LINQ to Entities and LINQ to SQL 579

Summary 579

CHAPTER 13: ENHANCEMENTS TO THE .NET COMMUNICATION FRAMEWORK 581

Enhancements in WCF Framework 3.5 581

Enhancements in WCF Framework 4.0 583

Summary 592

CHAPTER 14: .NET CHARTING COMPONENTS 593

Creating Charts 594

Using Chart Controls 605

Advanced Chart Manipulation 633

Summary 649

PART III: ASP.NET 4.0

CHAPTER 15: ASP.NET VERSION HISTORY 653

Development of the Web and Web Development 653

Enter ASP 654

Enter ASP.NET 655

ASP.NET Version History 657

Summary 668

CHAPTER 16: ASP.NET CHARTING CONTROLS 669

Creating Charts 670

Rendering ASP.NET Charts 679

Chart State Management 688

User Interactivity 694

Summary 709

CHAPTER 17: ASP.NET DYNAMIC DATA 711

Creating a New Dynamic Data Web Site 711

Working to Modify Implementation to Fit Business Needs 730

Summary 750

CHAPTER 18: ASP.NET MODEL VIEW CONTROLLER (MVC) 751

Introduction to MVC 752

Creating an MVC 2 Application 761

Adding New MVC 2 Pages 771

Customization in MVC 2 790

Routing Details 816

Testing with MVC 2 824

A Few More Points on MVC 2 834

Summary 835

CHAPTER 19: ASP.NET AJAX IMPROVEMENTS 837

Understanding Ajax 838

Using the ASP.NET Ajax Server Controls 841

Using the Microsoft Ajax Library 848

Summary 892

CHAPTER 20: ASP.NET AJAX CONTROL TOOLKIT AND JQUERY 893

First Look at the Ajax Control Toolkit 894

Using the Controls of the Toolkit 908

The jQuery Library 962

Summary 977

CHAPTER 21: HISTORY OF VISUAL BASIC 981

The Roots of Visual Basic 982

Visual Basic in the .NET Framework 986

Summary 1005

CHAPTER 22: VISUAL BASIC 10.0 LANGUAGE IMPROVEMENTS 1007

New Productivity-Improving Syntax 1008

Working with Dynamic Objects 1020

Variance 1026

Summary 1038

CHAPTER 23: HISTORY OF C# 1041

The Evolution of C# 1041

C# 1.0 1044

C# 2.0 1047

C# 3.0 1056

Summary 1064

CHAPTER 24: C# 4.0 LANGUAGE IMPROVEMENTS 1065

Pains with Interoperability 1066

Dynamic Lookup 1072

Named and Optional Parameters 1078

COM-Specific Interoperability Features 1084

Variance 1087

Summary 1099

PART VI: F#

CHAPTER 25: VISUAL F# AND THE OTHER .NET LANGUAGES 1103

A Brief History of F# 1104

F# at First Glance 1105

Your First F# Project 1112

Programming with F# 1113

A Larger Application in F# 1163

Other .NET Languages 1170

Summary 1171

INDEX 1173