Windows Forms apps and various versions of .NET and Visual Studio

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richard d - 12 Mar 2008 11:04 GMT

Hello everyone,

I'm writing a Windows Forms application (i.e. desktop) which I wish to
eventually distribute to a reasonably wide customer base (not
necessarily as wide as possible, but as wide as it makes sense for me
to do given my limited resources).

I am currently developing using VS 2005 and .NET 2.0. I am wondering
whether I should upgrade to VS 2008 and whether I should then continue
to develop against 2.0, or go to 3.0 or 3.5, or maybe produce separate
versions.

All advice gratefully received.

Cheers

Richard

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Jon Skeet [C# MVP] - 12 Mar 2008 11:09 GMT

> I'm writing a Windows Forms application (i.e. desktop) which I wish to
> eventually distribute to a reasonably wide customer base (not
> necessarily as wide as possible, but as wide as it makes sense for me
> to do given my limited resources).

Right.

> I am currently developing using VS 2005 and .NET 2.0. I am wondering
> whether I should upgrade to VS 2008 and whether I should then continue
> to develop against 2.0, or go to 3.0 or 3.5, or maybe produce separate
> versions.

I would definitely go up to VS2008, partly so you can use C# 3 - but
probably stick with .NET 2.0, at least for the moment. If you've
decided to go WinForms rather than WPF, .NET 3.0 wouldn't help you
much, and although .NET 3.5 has some benefits (in particular LINQ)
there's much less market penetration at the moment.

If you want to use LINQ to Objects from .NET 2.0, you could use a
third party implementation, e.g.
http://www.albahari.com/nutshell/linqbridge.html

Jon

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richard d - 12 Mar 2008 12:33 GMT

> > I'm writing a Windows Forms application (i.e. desktop) which I wish to
> > eventually distribute to a reasonably wide customer base (not
[quoted text clipped - 18 lines]
>
> Jon

Thank you very much for your reply.

My application has no D/B as such and apart from readability issues I
can't see any great advantage for me from LINQ (correct me if I'm
wrong).

I've been developing in WinForms now for about 8 months now. I don't
know much about WPF but, given that I've invested so much effort on
Forms, would it still be worth looking at using or migrating to WPF? I
mean, is it easy and is it worth it?

Cheers

Richard

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Jon Skeet [C# MVP] - 12 Mar 2008 13:40 GMT

> Thank you very much for your reply.
>
> My application has no D/B as such and apart from readability issues I
> can't see any great advantage for me from LINQ (correct me if I'm
> wrong).

Readability is important. Really important. You almost certainly have
code to manipulate data in some way or other - why not go about it in
an easier manner?

LINQ certainly isn't just for databases. Any time you're trying to find
the minimum value out of a collection, or sort a collection, or
anything like that - LINQ is almost guaranteed to make life easier.

Personally I think LINQ to Objects is rather more important than LINQ
to SQL.

> I've been developing in WinForms now for about 8 months now. I don't
> know much about WPF but, given that I've invested so much effort on
> Forms, would it still be worth looking at using or migrating to WPF? I
> mean, is it easy and is it worth it?

Well, it's a lovely technology, but it comes at the cost of requiring
.NET 3.0. There's also less experience in the community, which means
it's harder to learn about.

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Jon Skeet - <skeet@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
World class .NET training in the UK: http://iterativetraining.co.uk

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RobinS - 12 Mar 2008 20:47 GMT

>> I'm writing a Windows Forms application (i.e. desktop) which I wish to
>> eventually distribute to a reasonably wide customer base (not
[quoted text clipped - 19 lines]
>
> Jon

Can you use C#3 with .Net 2.0? I thought you had to use .Net 3.5. Is it only
Visual-Studio-version-dependent?

RobinS.
GoldMail.com

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Jon Skeet [C# MVP] - 12 Mar 2008 21:00 GMT

<snip>

> Can you use C#3 with .Net 2.0? I thought you had to use .Net 3.5. Is it only
> Visual-Studio-version-dependent?

You can only use C# 3 with Visual Studio 2008, but VS2008 can target
.NET 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5.

There are a few features you can't use without .NET 3.5, but not many.

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Jon Skeet - <skeet@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
World class .NET training in the UK: http://iterativetraining.co.uk

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Ignacio Machin ( .NET/ C# MVP ) - 12 Mar 2008 12:42 GMT

Hi,

> Hello everyone,

I think that using 2.0 is the best option, it's more widely distributed than
3.5, you can almost assure that any XP machine will have it.
Of course, you can always include the framework with your install , it will
only increase the size in around 24 MB :)

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Windows Forms apps and various versions of .NET and Visual Studio

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