The Moth

We know the February CTP contains older device bits than the November CTP, but since the DVD arrived through my letter box I thought I'd install it (yes I have better things to do but I was curious alright :-)

My goal was to find 5 things I didn't know about (not necessarily new in this CTP) *and* they should not be CF-specific.

1. PropertyGrid control. I hadn't noticed that this is now part of the default toolbox for winforms. BTW, if you want to use it today with VS2003, see this.

2. Object Test Bench for VB :-) They told me they would not do it. If you've got the Feb CTP, go play with it (e.g. follow the C# steps described here).

3. This has been true since Whidbey went public, but I only just noticed it. If in a C# project (or with VS not having any project loaded), you open a VB file, its regions are recognised :-) [This always pi**es me off with VS2003]. A related nice option is "Tools-Options-Text Editor-File Extension"

4. You know about partial classes. Well, VB still doesn't show us the constructor in the file we edit by default (like C# does) :-(

5. Select the menu "Class Diagram-Display Types". I guess this is a tiny step closer to having method signatures but until that happens... Anyway, there are other reasons to moan about once you observe how this is implemented in C# as opposed to VB. The way I see it, this is another blow for VB developers.

"You cannot cope with UML notation for return types, which is simply replacing 'As' with ':' *but* C# developers are perfectly capable even though the change is larger (moving the return type from the front of the method name to the back and precede it with a colon)."

As a UML shop through and through, this is yet another reason for us not to use the Class Designer (or to ditch VB for any new projects).