Starting with .NET

[dj4uk]

Ok guys I'm a complete newbie with .NET so be gentle!

First thing...out of C# and VB.NET which should I choose to use and why? I have experience with VB but I hear VB.NET is nothing like it!

Also when creating executables is it really true that the .net framework needs to be installed on the clients machine before it will work or is it just needed on the machine the exe is developed on?

I have plenty of other questions but those can wait...

Cheers

DJ

[MerrionComputin]

1) Whichever you feel most comfortable with. VB.Net will probably be marginally more familiar to you, but there really isn't any important difference.

2) Yes - just as VB 5/6 programs needed the VBRun dlls.

[dj4uk]

1. So C# doesn't have any addition features to VB.NET?

2. Surely only the libraries needed are installed with the exe not the entire framework?

[hellswraith]

The user has to have the .Net framework installed to run either VB.Net or C#.Net.

C# has a few features that VB doesn't have, and vice versa. They are only minor and usually there is a way to do the same thing in both with some work arounds.

[dj4uk]

If the user doesn't have the .net framework installed is there a way to include it with the application installer?

Also I have read that the .net framework is not available for windows 95 - does that mean if the minimum spec for my application will be windows 98 if I use .net?

If this is true then as our client still has machines using windows 95 would VB6 be the only option?

Can you write VB6 applications within Visual Studio .NET or would I need to dig out Visual Studio 6?

Cheers

DJ

[hellswraith]

Windows 95 is NOT supported, so yes, your minimum requirements would be 98 and up.

There is a way to include the framework in your distribution, but it will add 20+ MB to your install file. Or, you can do like I do, just tell them to visit windowsupdate.com that way they get the latest version and patches.

If you need to support win 95, then yes, you probably want to stay with VB6 for the time being. You need to use Visual Studio 6 to do it though, Visual Studio .Net is only used to create .Net code. Both VS6 and VS.Net can be installed at once on the same machine without problems. So you don't have to worry about that.

You need to get your clients to upgrade to a newer OS if you can , I don't even think that Windows 95 is even supported by MS anymore....I could be wrong though.....

[hellswraith]

Oh ya, Visual Studio .Net needs to be installed and ran on Win NT or higher (NT, 2000, XP) to run. If you want to create ASP.Net apps with it, you will need 2000 or XP Pro.

[Static]

just an ASP note.. You can Develop ASP.net on XP home..you just cannot test it. There is no way to set up XP home as a personal web server (or IIS? i forget) anyway...to test the asp it would need to be uploaded to a web server for each test.

[hellswraith]

You can't do web applications with XP Home:

* Limited functionality. Visual Studio .NET does not support creating ASP.NET Web applications or ASP.NET XML Web services when using Windows XP Home Edition.

This is from the MS site located here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/pr...qs/default.asp
I have tried, it doesn't work. You need IIS, even if your using a remote server. You can, though, download the ASP.Net web matrix, but the features are very limited compared to the VS IDE. (but hey, it is free!):
http://www.asp.net/webmatrix/default...dex=4&tabid=46

[Hyperspaced]

I am considering on buying an 1.2 Celeron Mobile/128MB RAM laptop that comes with XP Home for use with Visual Studio 6 and Visual Studio .NET.

Do you guys think it will suffice ?

Something else. I've been using VB6 and VB.NET on my Win98SE/WinXPpro desktop system. When deploying an application in VB6 from WinXP it just can't be run on the client systems !!! I have to compile it on Win98SE to run ok on any client OS. Does it have anything to do with VS.NET or WinXP installing libraries over VB6's libraries ??


Any help will be greatly appreciated

--hyperspaced

[hellswraith]

The laptop will run them, but you might want to bump up the ram to 512 if you can.

Also, just to make sure you understand, you won't be able to create ASP.Net apps with the VS.Net IDE if you have XP Home on it. You need XP Pro or Win 2000 (might even be able to do it on NT4 if it can run IIS 5).

You can, though, create ASP.Net apps with the ASP.Net Web Matrix (you can find it at www.asp.net), but you don't get the fancy intellisense and such with it (which with how big the framework is, is really a hinderence to me). So it is doable.

[ethanwa]

I would suggest you stick with VB.NET instead of C#. They pretty much do the same thing. If you are used to old VB style with statements like "Dim Hello as new String" then stick with VB.NET. The same line in C# is "string Hello;"

C# is also case sensitive and Visual Studio.NET won't change it to the correct case for you like it does for VB. Also, you'd need to learn to put a ; at the end of most lines, which can be tough to migrate to.

The main difference between VB6 and VB.NET is that it's now a full OOP (Object Oriented Programming) language, with Classes, Inheritance, Polymorphism, and all. These can be some difficult concepts to grasp, so I'd suggest some beginning VB.NET books. One great one I used was "Step-By-Step OOP with Visual Basic.NET and C#.NET". It's from the Microsoft Press and only costs $39 and is a great reference to learn OOP.

Spend a few weeks on it full-time and you'll get the hang of it. You'll never want to go back. .NET is the best thing MS has done in years.

-- Ethan --