Product Description

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition provides a full-featured development environment for Web developers who are building business applications. It offers the simplicity of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition, but with additional features and functionality for more advanced users, including the productivity enhancements that are part of Microsoft Visual Basic 2005.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3569 in Software
• Brand: Microsoft
• Model: 127-00012
• Released on: 2005-11-28
• Platforms: Windows XP, Windows 2000
• Format: CD-ROM
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.54 pounds

Features

• Ideal for the part-time or occasional developer to develop and deploy client-server based Windows, Web, SmartPhone, and Pocket PC applications
• Support for Visual Basic, C#, C++, and J# languages
• "Drag and drop" user interface designers for virtually every type of application; Master Pages support for maintaining a consistent look and feel across Web applications
• Includes a built-in Web server for testing Web applications, IIS is not needed; integrated SQL Reporting Services
• Edit and Continue for simple, intuitive debugging; integrated ClickOnce support

Amazon.com Product Description
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 (Standard Edition) is a comprehensive, high productivity professional development environment for building high performance, multi-tier applications for Windows, Web, and common consumer mobile devices. Intended for individual developers software development teams to build departmental client/server Windows applications and Web sites, Visual Studio 2005 provides a wide range of tools that streamline and enhance development processes.

Visual Studio 2005 combined with ASP.NET 2.0 offers an improved enviornment for publishing and administering a Web site. View larger.

Create a single Master Page template to define the layout of multiple content pages. View larger.

Use the new Accessibility Checker to identify noncompliance problems. View larger.

From the user's perspective, installing your ClickOnce application is simplicity itself. View larger.

With Visual Studio 2005, you can be more productive and obtain faster results; build dynamic Windows, Web, mobile, and Office-based solutions; communicate and collaborate more effectively within your software teams; and ensure quality early and often throughout the development process.

Among the new features in Visual Studio 2005 include integrated SQL Reporting Services, integrated ClickOnce support, dozens of new reusable controls for creating Windows and Web applications, master pages support for maintaining a consistent look and feel across Web applications, and an "Edit and Continue" functionality for simple, intuitive debugging.

Included in the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition are Microsoft Visual Basic, Microsoft Visual C#, Visual C++, and Microsoft Visual J# programming languages; tools for building Windows and Web solutions; SmartPhone and Pocket PC development tools; and tools for visually designing databases, queries, and stored procedures.

Intuitive and Powerful Development Features
Visual Studio 2005 is the ideal tool for the part-time or occasional developer that will streamline the development of client/server solutions. Development time is speeded up with intuitive, "What you see is what you get" functionality, drag-and-drop visual designers, a time-saving code editor, and an enhanced debugging environment. "Drag and drop" user interface designers are available for virtually every type of application, and Visual Studio 2005 also includes a built-in Web server for testing Web applications, so that IIS is not needed.

With Visual Studio 2005, you can take advantage of the powerful, enterprise-class Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. It also lets you automatically package and publish applications with a few easy clicks, thereby significantly simplifying interactive Web development and letting you easily manage consistent, reusable Web site layouts using time-saving master pages.

With enhanced debugging features, including hundreds of reusable controls, you can significantly reduce the amount of code you have to write and debug for common programming scenarios, saving you hours of development time. You can create better Web applications by writing less code, thanks to the more than 50 new server controls in ASP.NET 2.0. With new 64-bit debugger support, you can debug 64-bit applications with nearly identical capabilities as in 32-bit application debugging. You can also rapidly convert your 32-bit ASP.NET 2.0 code into a native 64-bit application without any recoding or manual recompiling. And if your code fails to compile, the AutoCorrect feature makes it easier than ever to identify and fix the problem.

Visual Studio 2005 includes several file editing and management features that will quickly become indispensable in your development process. With the "Change Tracking" feature, you can see at a glance where you have made changes to your code, and which of those changes have been saved. The "Clean Solution" tool lets you clean all of those unwanted intermediate files out of your solution with a single click. An "AutoRecover" feature prevents data loss by automatically recovering your work using periodically saved backups of your files.

Several "ClickOnce" features help to streamline your development as well. With "ClickOnce Deployment" you can publish your ClickOnce application easily to a central location from Visual Studio 2005, and let client machines install it from there. "ClickOnce Installation" makes installing applications on client machines easier than ever for users and administrators. But streamlined approaches don't mean that Visual Studio 2005 compromises on security. Not by a long shot. In fact, Visual Studio 2005 makes it easy for you to determine and set the minimum security permissions your ClickOnce application needs, and to debug your application with exactly those permissions.

With technology now going both global and mobile, it's more important than ever to have tools that will "think" outside the box of a standard desktop monitor. If your mobile application will be used by people speaking more than one language, or from more than one culture, you'll need to build it with localization in mind. Globalization features in Visual Studio 2005 add support for input, display, and output of a defined set of language scripts that relate to specific geographic areas. And now that people use all kinds of mobile devices today to access the Internet, it may be important for your Web site to offer each visitor an optimal experience no matter what screen size, bandwidth, or browser they are using.

Visual Studio 2005 includes full support for developing mobile device applications using C/C++. By using Visual Studio 2005, device developers automatically have access to the wide variety of productivity features like Intellisense, integrated testing, access to the rich set of Team System features, and much more. The Visual Studio 2005 managed User Interface (UI) device designer can be described as "what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG). It offers developers a customized design environment for any of the available Windows Mobile device display sizes and orientations, and displays the application exactly as it will appear on the device. And with new ASP.NET controls, you'll have access to a number of new controls for creating fully-featured, interactive Web pages that are viewable on a number of mobile devices.

Customer Reviews

Adequate, but Quirky
I was using VC++ 6.0 (I skipped the VS2003 experience) up until last Friday when I received VS2005 Standard Edition from Amazon. All of my comments will refer to the IDE, and I did not have a prior version of the .NET framework on my (Win2K Pro) system. I have also not had a chance to to any .NET stuff.

Shipping from Amazon was as promised (I specified next day), and the product arrived in excellent condition.

0) Comes on five CDs, and I didn't notice an option anywhere to purchase a DVD version. Microsoft's marketting hype claims 1 disk. Maybe they only have one DVD burner in Redmond, and it's broken. I pitty the Pro Edition buyers if this is the case.

1) Takes about 40 minutes to install on a AMD64/3500,1gb RAM system.

2) Will install on Win2K Pro as long as you have Service Pack 4 installed.

3) It consumes about 3gb, counting MSDN.

4) The IDE does not conform to theme settings of OS (annoys the hell outa me). The most glaring part of this is that the font I specified for menus on my system is being ignored. Secondarily, it uses the Office 2005 theme, and I think it looks like crap.

5) Class Wizard is dead (and I am not fond of that fact).

6) Syntax highlighting is stunted. I can't change foreground AND background color on several items. I also don't get to set syntax coloring on Wizard lines. I hate that.

7) The compiler caught several errors that VC6 ignored (such as defining a const without specifying the type - GASP!)

8) The compiler also caught a handler function in the CPP file for a user-defined message that did not have the correct return type specified (I was incorrectly using "void" instead of "LRESULT"). However, the matching (and also incorrect) prototype defined in the H file was not detected.

9) When you un-pin workspace windows and turn off interface animations, hovering the mouse over the side-tabs still has a 1-2 second delay before rolling the windows back out.

10) When an un-pinned window is rolled out from the sides, the interface is not correctly invalidated, causing the side window to partially obscure the bottom window (if it's pinned, of course).

11) When you want to create an "event" handler, you have to have the caret positioned over the MESSAGE_MAP block in either the H or CPP file before you can even see the list of available events in the properties window.

12) While I'm talking about the properties window, I gotta say I'd rather have the old properties dialogs back than be forced to scroll the "never-enbing-list-of-properties".

13) If you're moving from VC6, be prepared for a bunch of warnings about deprecated code. MS has new "more secure" versions of our old favorites, like strcpy, itoa, printf, sscanf, etc. You can add a compiler definition to the project settings to ignore these warnings (and you might want to at first).

14) Some of the MFC macros have different parameter types. Be prepared for that.

15) I was surprised to find that you have to #include a file in stdafx.h in order to use the CListView class.

16) I looked over the Feedback page at Microsoft to see what kinds of bugs/suggestions were being reported, and it appears as if MS is making a concerted effort to reject all issues regarding the IDE's performance and usability. Status quo, IMHO...

17) They're already supposed to be working on a patch, but we probably won't see anything for at least six months.

18) Intellisense appears to work quite well, and it has not yet refused to show me class members. In VC6, you never knew when it was going to work or just stare back at you with a dumb look on it's face.

In closing, if you feel the need to get up to speed with the latest MFC stuff, want a better C++ compiler, or have the need to write code for .NET 2.0, don't hesitate to get this product. I think it's a worthy purchase regardless of the little things I've found.

PS. No, I haven't got a clue as to what a "streamlined" user experience is, nor how it compares to the Pro version's "full" user experience.

Almost enough to get the job done.
Hi all, I've been writing code for over 5 years now and work as a developer for a software company. I'm also MCAD Certified. We use VS.Net 2005 exclusively and the reviews that you will read below about this program sucking are not true. I believe the reason users may think this program sucks is because they don't know how to use it. It's just like anything else, if you don't know how to use the program you won't benefit from its features. Now one thing I will tell you is that when you want to create a Windows Service you WILL need the Professional version of VS.Net 2005 to do that. Other than that I have created atleast 25 web sites ranging from personal sites to enterprise e-commerce, numerous desktop apps that range from single managed apps to apps that use WIN32 API, ie old COM stuff, Class libraries, Server Controls and .Net Remoting objects. So unless you need to create Windows Services this is the package for you.

Useful product, but still a challenge
I primarily write in VB/VBA -- not at a really advanced level, mostly focused on data management -- and am trying to make the transition to asp.net. So my comments are directed along these lines.

The IDE itself is generally very good. Layout, menus, etc. are fine, intellisense is fantastic and the error messages are actually pretty useful.

That said, getting asp.net to function the way you want it to (if you're moving from VB) is still quite challenging and time consuming. Some examples -- if you add a database to your project, VS won't recognize it until you exit and restart; changing column widths on a grid view is a bit of a challenge (just google "Gridview column widths" and read away) -- mine wouldn't work until I shut VS down and relaunched; master pages are great, but incredibly finicky -- some of my pages appear with the designated breadcrumb, some don't, go figure; three tier data architecture is incredibly challenging b/c the ObjectDataSource is very picky -- after a few days of playing around with it, I abandoned a three tier set-up for a two tier one. Etc., etc.

MS is doing quite a bit to push people from the COM world into the .Net world and certainly VS 2005 is much more accessible than VS 2003. But when the language itself is still so buggy, the best IDE in the world only helps you to better focus your frustrations. My op is VS for asp.net still has a long ways to go before it becomes nearly as accessible as VB/VBA.

As a follow-up, some of the issues that I cited above are easily addressed by a better understanding of the IDE (i.e., fixing my unfamiliarity with the IDE). However, there are still numerous areas where the separate pieces of asp.net take an inordinate amount of time and effort to fit together properly (the object data source being the best/worst example I've hit). Six mos. of pretty regular use have only reinforced the views that I originally expressed -- very good IDE, an ambitious concept, but one that still needs a fair amount of work.