For all those who are interested in what Windows Forms 2005 will offer for developers, i managed to get this from the chat session. These are all the questions the participants asked and answered by the Microsoft guys.

Ed_H_MS (Moderator): Welcome to today’s chat on New Windows Forms Features in Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1. We have members of the Windows Forms team here to answer your questions today. I will ask the hosts to introduce themselves.

Jim_MS (Expert): My name is Jim Galasyn, and I'm a Programmer/Writer for the .NET Client User Education team.

Mike_MS (Expert): Hi my name is Mike Harsh. I'm a program manager on the Windows Forms team.

Joe_MS (Expert): My name is Joe Stegman, I'm a Program Manager on the Windows Forms team.

Ed_H_MS (Moderator): And I am Ed Hickey, Visual Basic MVP Lead. Glad you all could make it today!

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Mike_MS (Expert):
Q: Will the Windows forms controls such as the imagelist control support 32-bit icons w/ alpha?

A: Yes, we've fixed quite a few bugs in this area since Beta 1.

MarkRi_MS (Expert):
Q: More of a request than a question i guess. So far i have to say that Windows Forms controls are missing a list view and tree view dedicated to showing the contents of your HD, so little to no user programming is needed to display such information but of g

A: We currently have no plans to provide an intregated listview/treeview combo that is used to navigate the computer hard drive.

Mike_MS (Expert):
Q: The express edition is a subset of the Professional version of visual studio right?

A: From a feature perspective, yes they are. But the Express editions also come bundled with sample applications and have a different default option set tuned for the hobbyist developer.


Ed_H_MS (Moderator):
Q: will team system be launched together with Visual Studio 2005?

A: I really don't know, hopefully I can find an answer for you by the end of the chat. I could guess, but that's not very helpful...

MarkRi_MS (Expert):
Q: Mark but why not, this would be a very useful feature in my opinion, especially in the express line of products. If you have no plans for such controls then i request you put a tutorial somewhere on MSDN that shows you how to mod the current Controls

A: Great point about having a sample. I'll file a doc bug to have a sample that demonstrates this.

Joe_MS (Expert):
Q: What are the New Features in Windows Forms 2005 Beta 1 ?

A: There are a number of new features in Windows Forms 2005. We have a new deployment technology called ClickOnce (worthy of a chat all by itself). We've added several new professional controls including Office like menu and toolbars as well as an improved data grid control. We've added MaskedTextBox, SplitContainer, WebBrowser, TableLayout and a FlowLayout controls. We added a bunch of new design time features such as snap lines and smart tasks (this demos much better than me rambling on about it). We've added a simple sound API, an async component and done a lot to make working with data easier. We've added a new configuration API to make it easier to write applicaiton and user settings. Finally, we've done a lot of enhancements to our existing controls.

Jim_MS (Expert):
Q: Does the Express versions provide support for PocketPC programming?

A: The Express sku does not currently support PocketPC.

MarkRi_MS (Expert):
Q: With the tooltip control how it can now become a balloon tooltip, will it be possible to have it bindable to other controls such as the try icon control and have click events like when Windows XP displays the desktop cleanup wizard?

A: We are looking into the possibility of adding balloon tooltip support for the NotifyIcon.

Joe_MS (Expert):
Q: Joe: thanks for the Outlook sample on windowsforms.net. It shows some interesting techniques

A: Sure - I'll be updating the sample when we ship Beta 2. There's some new work we've done with ToolStrips and DataGridView that will make this even easier.

Joe_MS (Expert):
Q: You mentioned Office like controls. Are you talking Office 2002 or Office 2003? For example, what about the Help panels in Office 2003?

A: We've added new Office like ToolBars and Menus (Office 2003). This means we support the look and feel of Office 2003 menus and toolbars out of the box (however we allow you to customize out look and feel to your hearts content). As for the Office Help Pane, although we don't ship an Office Help Pane in the box, you can build that type of Control using our ToolBars. See the Beta 1 samples on http://www.windowsforms.net/Default....bey%20Beta%201 for examples of this (see Messenger, Outlook and Money).

Mike_MS (Expert):
Q: Windows Forms is touted as being the way to go for Windows programming, however only a handfull of Microsoft tools are available that use Windows Forms.... When are we going to see more internal commitment to this technology

A: The largest internal partner building with Windows Forms is SQL 2005. The entire SQL management toolset is being rewritten with Windows Forms. The Team Server product is also written largely with Windows Forms as are the majority of new UI and dialogs in Visual Studio 2005. Aside from all that, there are dozens of internal tools that are being created with Windows Forms. All this dogfooding has helped make Windows Forms 2.0 a much more robust solution for building apps.

Jim_MS (Expert):
Q: This is a request... a better way of managing panels. When I multiple panels that occupy the same location, it's awkard to get the panel I want to work with in the IDE. And if I offset them, and align them in code, then I don't have WYSIWYG.

A: You can always pick particular controls or components from the Properties window. The first field is a dropdown that lists all the controls/components on your form.

MarkRi_MS (Expert):
Q: When are Windows Forms or managed code going to be introduced for the DDK? Like for Printer drivers

A: The WinFX initiative has plans to expose a lot more of the operating system to managed code programming. You can find out more about WinFX on MSDN.com.

thanks,
mark