How smart is your client?
Friday I joined a training course about Smart Clients by Erno de Weerd from Info Suppport. VS2005 offers a new toolset for better smart client development. Something developers should know at least something about.
Before the training I didn't really had a clue about what makes a client smart. Erno explained that according to Microsoft it's a Windows forms application that functions online as well as offline and that uses webservices for the connectivity. MS Outlook is an excellent example of a smart client. It offers a rich GUI, you can get your mail online and read it offline. Another example is road navigation sofware on mobile devices.
The toolset VS 2005 offers a lot of new tools that makes the user experience in smart clients better. New layout controls (FlowLayout, SplitContainer, TableLayout), enhanced data controls (DataContainer, GridView, DataConnector, DataNavigator), and UI toys (WinBar, ContextMenuStrip). Nice, you can now easy make apps with a Windows theme, but not really shocking.
Another nice one, is the possibility of asynchronous data access. In VS2003 it's not possible to change a windows control from the active thread. This still won't work in VS2005, but now a nice exception will be generated, instead of blocking the userinterface.
More interesting, seems to be "Click-Once" deployment. Well, of course it's not really one click, but it's a type of deployment on-demand and over a network connection. Using ClickOnce, you'll be able to dynamically download a client application to a user's desktop and ensure automatic updating when new versions of the application files become available at the originating site. Erno told us that some customers are willing to buy VS2005, just because of ClickOnce!
With the rapidly increasing sales of PDA's, the compact framework will become very important. Version 2.0 includes features you would already have expected in CE1.0, like a DateTimePicker, a LinkLabel amd WebBrowser control. Now it's here, compatible with CF1.0 and with enhanced performance: ao XML Processing through XPath, XMLSerialization (from object to XML and back), support for Message Queuing and SQL Server 2005 Mobile Edition.
The last topic was about the new Visto (Visual Studio Tools for Office). I already heared a lot about this Office integration with Visual Studio 2005, at the combined LogicaCMG and Microsoft MIND meeting.
Microsoft has devoted a part of the MSDN website to smart clients: http://msdn.microsoft.com/smartclient/