Smart Client Development Using Visual Studio Tools for Office and Windows Mobile Todd Apley Software Design Eng/Test Lead

Agenda Understanding Smart Clients Building Smart Clients Using Office Building Smart Clients for Mobile Devices

Smart clients are easily deployed and managed client applications that provide an adaptive and interactive experience by leveraging local resources and intelligently connecting to distributed data sources. Web Services & Offline/Online support Device Adaptability Tough to Deploy Heavy Footprint DLL Hell Network Dependency Poor User Experience Rich UI Complex To Develop Rich User Experience Developer Productivity Responsive Broad Reach Easy Change Management Ease of Deployment

Increasing Productivity

Agenda Understanding Smart Clients Building Smart Clients Using Office Building Smart Clients for Mobile Devices

Bedrock of features to leverage Rich user experience provided by Office applications XML schemas provide custom business structure Actions task pane and Smart Tags enable contextual UIs Online / Offline capable Broadly used by knowledge workers Familiar authoring and formatting of business documents Analysis and calculation of business data Information sharing and collaboration Capitalize on the benefits of the Office platform Power of Office platform investments Improved end-user productivity and reduced data errors Substantially reduce end-user training costs Smart Clients on Office

Microsoft’s strategic tool for developing Office solutions: Microsoft Excel 2003* Microsoft Word 2003* Microsoft InfoPath 2003 Microsoft Outlook 2003 Add-in Support Targeted at the professional developer Visual Basic 2005 Visual C# Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the Microsoft Office System (VSTO) * Microsoft Office System Professional Edition or Excel 2003 or Word 2003 standalone versions

Reasons for using VSTO vs. VBA VBA* is a 1990’s Technology Subset syntax = limited functionality & flexibility Code in document = no source code/version control Casual security model = high potential security risk Access to limited controls within Office applications Visual Studio Tools for Office is 100%.NET Complete syntax (Professional languages) Choice of Visual Basic.NET or C# Code Behind = mainstream source code control “Publish” deployment for easier version control.NET Security model = robust security enforced Complete access to managed controls * There are no pending plans to retire VBA at this time

Major focus on dev. productivity Integrated design-time experience (Excel & Word right in the IDE) Full access to the.NET Framework, Web services, ADO.NET, integrated debugging Support for managed controls (MS and third-party) First class “Hosted” controls Managed Document Actions Pane & Smart Tags Schema-based programming model CLR-based security model New data caching capabilities Data island accessible in a server environment Improved online publish deployment model

Excel/Word Designers Hosted Controls Windows Forms controls Publish Deployment Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Integrated Design-time Experience

Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Schema-Based Programming Model Direct programmatic access to XML Nodes XMLNode instances created for each schema element Access XmlNode instances, instead of UI elements Data binding support Event model ContextEnter/ContextLeaveAfterInsert/BeforeDelete BidRequestRequestDateNode.Text = Now

Managed Controls Windows Forms Controls Managed Windows Forms Controls are available On the document or worksheet surface On a Windows Form On the Actions Pane Simply drag-drop from the Toolbox onto the designer surface of your choice May be dynamically added/removed at runtime Third-party/Custom.NET user controls supported

Actions Pane Context-based display of information

Actions Pane An Overview Simplifies the developer experience Simplified object model Eliminates the need for XML expansion packs and XML mappings Provides support for managed controls Actions panes are an enhancement to the Smart Document feature introduced in Office 2003.

Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Managed Document Actions Task Pane Layout UI with Windows Forms Designer (UserControls) Add to document with a single line of code! ISmartDocument implementation provided under the covers Does not require mapping of XML Schema Dim ctrl as new MyUserControl() ActionsPane.Controls.Add(ctrl)

Microsoft Word Real Estate Offer

Motivations for Enabling Outlook Extensibility in VSTO A lot of people “live” in Outlook and tasks part of typical business process and document workflow Desire for single interface for multiple back-end systems Reduced training and expanded access as a result of familiar Office UI

Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Outlook Add-ins Project template for Outlook Add-ins Add-in loader component Snippets & samples for common dev tasks.NET Framework, Web services, ADO.NET, integrated debugging

Possible VSTO Outlook Scenarios Line of Business Applications Collaboration & Workflow Solutions Digital Content Integration Calendar Integration Solutions Utilities & Tools

Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the Microsoft Office System Version 3 (Coded named Orcas)

Ribbon Extensibility Menus / toolbars are gone New extensibility model Targeted same behavior across applications Declarative markup with new controls U.I. definitions are additive Definitions fixed at load time Document-level or application-level Tab Chunk Ribbon

VSTO ‘v3’ - Overview Strategic platform infrastructure (WinFx, MAF) Doc-level solutions Word, Excel, InfoPath: 2003 onwards Managed controls on the document surface Doc-level ActionsPane ServerDocument – manipulate documents without automating Office Word content control support App-level add-ins Appdomain isolation Remote updateability All Office apps App-level custom ActionsPane Ribbon customization Support for legacy “shared” add-ins Highly-streamlined developer experience New designers: ribbon, ActionsPane, Outlook ClickOnce deployment and security

CustomTaskPane and Ribbon

Summary Office development is more approachable, discoverable, richer, and robust Data binding makes your life easier Hosted and managed controls provide greater design flexibility Offline and server features extend the reach of Office application development VSTO 2005 ships with: Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System 2005 Microsoft Visual Studio Team Systems VSTO Version 3.0 in development

Agenda Understanding Smart Clients Building Smart Clients Using Office Building Smart Clients for Mobile Devices

Outline Developing Windows Mobile Applications Devices and the Windows Mobile platform Getting started with device development User interface and controls Windows Mobile 5.0 Common device tasks State and Notifications Broker

Windows Mobile Devices Windows Mobile provides a variety of device types Pocket PC Smartphone Pocket PC Phone Edition

The Windows Mobile Platform Windows Mobile Common Win32 platform across device types Mobile versions of productivity tools Excel Mobile, Word Mobile, Pocket Outlook Simplified access to device extensions Camera, GPS, Phone

Developing for Windows Mobile.NET Compact Framework 2.0 Leverage desktop.NET Framework skills Optimized for smart devices Provides 28% of the coverage in 8% of the size Full support for VB 2005 and C# language features Visual Studio 2005 Development experience consistent with desktop Automated application deployment Integrated device debugging Emulators Develop and debug applications without a device Emulator Manager provides centralized control

Windows Mobile 5.0 Tools Visual Studio 2005 is the single development tool for Windows Mobile 5.0 development Supports build, deploy, debug across.NET Compact Framework 1.0/2.0 and native code for Windows Mobile 2003 devices upward Integrates device development completely to Visual Studio development environment Managed and native development in one place IntelliSense Remote Tools eVC3, eVC4, and VS.NET 2003 Applications will still run Cannot debug or deploy direct to Windows Mobile 5.0 Should be used for maintenance of apps for pre-2003 devices

New Features in VS 2005 True ARM emulator with higher fidelity experience Same executable/CAB for device and emulator Realistic device performance Direct3D and GAPI support ActiveSync, Shared Folders, Rich Display, More Serial Ports New debugger Brand new architecture rewritten from line 0 Optimized for USB 2.0 performance Attach to and debug a running process Attach to multiple processes on multiple devices New designers Improved UI designers (docking and anchoring) Data designers (drag, drop and bind SQL to forms) Improved CAB designer support (new project type) Multiplatform support Target multiple devices and platforms with a variety of languages--all within a single project

Windows Mobile 5.0 Managed APIs Focus on simplifying device development Encapsulate common device tasks Global Positioning System interaction Camera and picture management 3-D Graphics and multimedia support State and Notifications Broker (SNAPI) Common repository for device information Phone state, battery life, what song is playing Sends notifications of changes in device state Network availability, arrival of phone call Arrival of SMS/ message

The Windows Mobile Developer Experience

User Interface Basics UI created with same form-based model as desktop Most desktop controls available Consistent properties support Consistent event model Device specific controls added InputPanelNotificationDocumentList

Working with Controls

Summary Smart Clients allow developers to take advantage of all of the resources available on the machine Developers with Windows Forms or ASP.NET development skills can leverage these to create applications for Office or Mobile devices