VSTO 2008 Beta 1 - What's in there?

  • Article

VS 2008 Beta 1 has been out for a while, and there are ton of features in it. Lately, people have been asking questions about Beta 1 on the VSTO forums. I thought it would be a good idea to post some details about Beta 1.

VSTO has a ton of new features in this release. First things first, as many of you would have noticed that VSTO is not a separate SKU any more. This was done to simplify the licensing options for customers. Moreover, I feel that VSTO 2008, (v3 for the Office tools) is going to become more mainstream as more developers look to develop on the Office platform.

There is only word to describe the VSTO v3 release - breadth! From Office client to server, we have covered a wide range of features. We've already started blogging on some of our features here. Some of our newer features include:

  • Ribbon Visual Designer allows you to customize the ribbon in Word, Excel, and Outlook. Drag and drop controls and party on!
  • SharePoint Workflow tools let you debug and deploy workflows for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). We referring to this, internally, as providing a "simple F5 experience".
  • Outlook Form Regions support: Watch more about this in Bob Muglia's Tech-Ed keynote around the 1 hour, 11 minutes mark.
  • Word Content controls support: This is easily the most exciting feature in Word 2007 for developers and we provide familiar .NET based databinding support for them. Now they can use VSTO to develop sophisticated Word based solutions. 
  • New ClickOnce based deployment and security model - you do not have to deal with .NET CAS settings. This is beyond doubt the biggest complaint in VSTO v2 and we have, hopefully, done the right thing here now.
  • VBA-VSTO interop: Do you have a lot of VBA macro code that requires work to be ported to .NET? This feature allows it to access it from you VSTO code.
  • Add-ins (application level customizations) for most Office client applications - Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Visio, InfoPath and even Project (new in v3).
  • And more....

Guess what - this is not just it. With VS 2008 professional, you will get ALL the Office 2003 features and support that you are already using with VSTO 2005 and VSTO SE. There are tons of other work that we have done under the covers with relation to version resilience (check out TQ's session on MAF), refactoring and re-architecture to have a consistent VSTA and VSTO story.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    June 05, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    June 11, 2007
    Seems like there has been no documentation updates on the VSTO support for Word Content Controls. I will check with my team and post it over here.

  • Anonymous
    June 12, 2007
    You can look at "Word Host Controls" at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/d1kax449(VS.90).aspx. There is also a nice article on MSDN magazine called "New VSTO Features Help you Customize Word and Outlook at http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/07/06/VSTO/default.aspx. This article has some nice screenshots.

  • Anonymous
    June 12, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    June 14, 2007
    "Repeating sections" is a feature available in InfoPath. I don't think Word has any controls that allow this. Have you considered using InfoPath? Check out more details of converting a Word form to InfoPath template here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/infopath/HA101154661033.aspx

  • Anonymous
    November 12, 2007
    We just heard the opening "KeyNote" session for the SharePoint portion of the DevConnections

  • Anonymous
    November 13, 2007
    I'm exploring the feasibility and potential benefit of using VSTO as a replacement for VBA. However, Office 2007 has been out since January 2007, but I still can't find any way to do document level customizations for Office 2007.  VSTO 2005 SE allows application level cutomizations (i.e. Add-Ins) for a couple products of Office 2007, but it does not support document-level customizations for Office 2007. If I had been trying to use VSTO as a replacement to VBA in Office 2003, I would now be stuck with no support for Office 2007.  My company buys Office OEM with our computers and we've been forced to buy Office 2007 for a little while now.  I'm sure glad I'm not currently try to use VSTO in it's current state. Until VSTO can fully support a new version of Office when Office is released, independent of when Visual Studio is released, I don't see VSTO as a feasible whole-hog replacement to VBA, even though it seems Microsoft is wanting to move that way. These issues make VSTO seem very un-inviting. Am I missing something about VSTO or Microsoft's plan for it?

  • Anonymous
    November 13, 2007
    All VSTO document customizations created using VS 2005 should continue to work with Office 2007. We have not yet shipped the design-time support for creating Office 2007 solutions. It will be released with VS 2008. Check out the Soma's announcement for VS 2008 release: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/nov07/11-05TechEdDevelopersPR.mspx.

  • Anonymous
    November 13, 2007
    Wow!  Thanks for the fast reply, nikhilkh!  It has been a bit challenging to get good information about VSTO, so your reply is very much appreciated! That's encouraging to know that document-level customizations for Office 2003 should still work in Office 2007. It's also good to know that full design-time support for creating Office 2007 solutions is coming with VS 2008.  That's great!  When I first installed and investigated VSTO 2005 SE, and I saw it supported application-level customizations but not document-level for Office 2007, I feared that the document-level customizations were not going to be supported at all for Office 2007.  I later read something that lead me to think what you just said, but I'm glad to hear it more directly.