Back from VB.NET world tour event

I am back. I arrived at event venue at 8:55am. Many peoples were waiting in front of function room. 9am sharp, we were allowed toenter to functionn room.

I can briefly count that is about 550 attendees. 400 T-shirts were given away, according to VB.NET Product Manager, Malaysia.

After welcome and introduction by PM Malaysia, Microsoft's Jay Roxe, the Product Manager for Visual Basic shown us the way to extend Visual Basic.NET application using popular and powerful community usercontrols - VB Power Pack. Some useful controls could be found in VB Power Pack are Toolbar, Task Panel (XP style outlook bar), MSN like notification window and etc. Then, Jay asked is anyone using Tablet PC. I could see one or two persons shown up their hands. Jay continued to show usage of Ink Control for writing recognition. Lastly, Jay demo a simple VBA application by integrate XML data returned from .NET web services into Excel worksheet. XML DataSource mapping do the treats to display XML on form.

After ten minutes break, Matthew Gertz,the Development Lead of Visual Basic Compiler Team take over the presentation. He demonstrated some new features built-in onto upcoming version of Visual Studio.NET - VS.NET 2005. Matthew had shown quite alot of VS.NET 2005 enhancements :

• XP Themed supported
• Partial Class - ability to split class code into two or more source code file.
• Click Once Deployment
  
• My Class
• Control Alignment Indicator - Vertical/Horizontal shown up while moving control around form to help developer to have "tidy up" form display.
• Fix error during debugging without stop the execution.
• Naming Symbol - Modify control's name property from property sheet would be synchronized to "object reference" in source code file.
• Smart Tag
• Prompt syntax error description, tips of syntax usage and suggestions to fix error.
• Display "builder" screen, like VFP controls builder.
  
• Drag & Drop DataSource
• Enhanced Code Snippet Technology - Similar task code snippet can now be group together.

I like the enhancements bolded above. It would be wonderful if FoxTeam implements them into Visual FoxPro.

Additional Info given during FAQ section:

1. SQL Server Reporting Services would be shipped with VS.NET 2005
2. Serial Communication Managed Code Class

If you ever attend .NET related event, you may find that MS presenter like to use code snippet to drag & drop code segment into source code editor. As told, there would be 500 code snippets being shipped with upcoming VS.NET.

Somethign I feel quite excited, there are much more developers ask questions in this event compare with previous one. There are 50 question sheets (at least) been passed to Jay and Matthew. Why would this happen?

Additional Resources :
Visual Studio .NET Bootstrapper
Hosted Experience
Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition Beta
Visual Basic Power Pack
VB @ the Movies
CaveManHank Source Code
Windows Mobile 2003-based Pocket PCs SDK & localized emulator
Smart Client Applications
Visual Basic Developer Center
Web Development