This is a series of articles exploring the new tools and APIs that developers will find in Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0, Visual Studio 2005, and the .NET Compact Framework version 2.0. The series begins with an introduction to Windows Mobile 5.0 and the tools needed to get started developing for Windows Mobile 5.0 today.
A View of Win Mobile 5.0 from 10,000 Feet
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Forcing an upgrade of Visual Studios… It seems alot for someone to have to purchase a VS2005 to develop for the new WM5 release.
Because the communications layer is new, the existing environments such as Microsoft eMbedded Visual C++ version 4.0 and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 are unable to support it.
Its understandable that they made alot of changes but why cant there be a patch or download to enable VS2003 to develop for WM5? And VS2005 is still beta. Can you install both VS2003 and VS2005 on same machine and will .NET1.1 and .NET 2.0 co-exist?
Well did some quick reading (Should have before posting) but VS 2k3 and 2k5 can co-exist on the same system. And gotdotnet.com hash a relatively long list of Backward breaking changes between .NET 1.1 and 2.0.
Still if you just want to play around and make apps for fun its not cheap to have to upgrade.
Is it just the new communications layer they are unable to suppoort? Or developing for the new OS in general?
If it’s just the new communications layer, that isn’t so bad.
Yes, you can install both VS 2003 and VS2005 and .NET 1.1 along with .NET 2.0
I have this setup
.NET framework has been designed to allow multiple runtimes to co-exist seamlessly. That is by design. So you will never have problems running multiple .NET versions on same machine.
Moreover, any website (ASP.NET) or executable or DLL can be forced to use a specific runtime (if compatible, of course) so you can make your EXEs run on .NET 1.1 or switch to .NET 2.0 (if compatible). The same way, when (if) you find an application which doesn’t run with latest environment, you can make it use .NET 1.0 or 1.1. Again, that’s by design so you don’t need to pay much attention to that.
BTW, it’s quite understandable that WM5 requires Visual Studio 2005, mostly because changes in the whole runtimes (and extended features). However, I didn’t check if Express versions of VS will allow mobile development. Express versions (like Visual Basic.NET Express) will be priced at $49 and thus are very accessible.
I thin it’s very likely that some mobile development can appear on such versions though you might not be able to match all features VS 2005 has.
its microsoft: they’re going to force people to upgrade.
duh.