Visual Studio 2008 Direct

Visual Studio 2008 is an integrated development environment (IDE) that provides a suite of tools for building applications across Windows, the Web, mobile devices, and the Microsoft Office system . Although its official support ended on April 10, 2018

References & NuGet

  • Use Project → Add Reference to add .NET assemblies or COM references.
  • Visual Studio 2008 predates integrated NuGet; use NuGet command-line or later Visual Studio for package management.

Switch to File: Ctrl + , (Comma) opens a quick navigation dialog to find files in your project. 2. Hidden IDE Features & Tricks visual studio 2008

  • ASP.NET AJAX Extensions were built into the framework, not a separate download.
  • The ScriptManager and UpdatePanel controls were first-class citizens in the Toolbox.
  • Web Deployment Projects (add-on) allowed more control over compilation and output.
  • CSS management and master pages were refined further from VS 2005.
  • Many NuGet packages and modern libraries no longer support .NET 3.5.
  • The built-in web server (Cassini) does not support HTTP/1.1 features like chunking.
  • Some security certificates for code signing have changed.

The “Forgotten” Features

  • WPF Designer (Cider): The visual designer for Windows Presentation Foundation was present but notoriously slow. Most WPF developers in 2008 still wrote XAML by hand.
  • Workflow Foundation Designer: A visual designer for building state-machine and sequential workflows.
  • Unit Testing: Built-in MSTest (a predecessor to today’s test runners) with code coverage in Team System editions.

By March 2008, our entire shop had migrated. The crashes stopped. The compile times improved by 15% (thanks to a rewritten background parser). And when Service Pack 1 arrived that summer, it added ADO.NET Entity Framework v1—buggy as it was, it was the first real shot at ORM from Microsoft. Visual Studio 2008 is an integrated development environment

It arrived at a critical juncture. The industry was shifting from the stability of Windows XP and .NET 2.0 toward the new paradigm of Windows Vista and the ambitious .NET Framework 3.5. Visual Studio 2008 was the bridge that connected the old guard with the new wave of development practices. Today, we look back at the IDE that defined a generation of developers. Use Project → Add Reference to add