Now that we have gone through some key concepts in the previous part in this series, before we go any further in terms of detailed technical concepts, it would be nice to have some “mental visual model” of how multi-targeting impacts almost all project related scenarios in Visual Studio 2010 and thus benefits the users.

Scott Guthrie’s excellent blog on multi-targeting support in Visual Studio 2010 covers many of these key benefits and scenarios. Please make sure you read that blog before you continue reading the rest of this series, as those help too in the “mental visual model” that I am aiming to establish with this part.

The key take away from Scott’s blog that I would like to highlight is that, because of the true multi-targeting support in Visual Studio 2010, being within the same IDE your project can target many different frameworks. This provides incredible productivity advantages in my opinion. So now - once you move your projects to Visual Studio 2010 - you can continue working with your projects that are targeted to frameworks earlier than .NET Framework v4.0 without doing anything!

I would like to add some more scenarios here to enhance the visuals and provide concrete visual examples that we can refer back to for the concepts as we encounter them in the rest of this series:

(All the example projects below are of the C# project type)

You will be able to create projects that target .NET Framework v2.0 in Visual Studio 2010

In prior versions of Visual Studio, before Visual Studio 2010, the projects could only target .NET Framework versions v2.0, v3.0 and v3.5 therefore it was, mostly, sufficient to identify a framework only with its version.

This is changing with Visual Studio 2010 – now projects will be able to target not only current versions of the .NET Framework, but they will also be able to target future versions of the .NET Framework and even target other framework-families like Silverlight. In other words Visual Studio 2010 supports true multi-targeting and truly extensible multi-targeting.

Now suddenly the version itself is not sufficient to describe a Target Framework; we need a new kind of moniker to describe/identify frameworks in the extensible multi-targeting world.

Enter the Target Framework Moniker.

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) RIA Services for Silverlight is one of those. On May 17, Microsoft delivered the final 1.0 release of that code, which adds support for Silverlight 4 and Visual Studio 2010.

WCF RIA Services simplifies the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms. RIA Services provides a pattern to write application logic that runs on the mid-tier and controls access to data for queries, changes and custom operations. It also provides end-to-end support for common tasks such as data validation, authentication and roles by integrating with Silverlight components on the client and ASP.NET on the mid-tier.

 new community site has recently launched that allows you to download Visual Studio 2010 themed images that you can use for your Windows desktop background.  You can visit the site here: http://vs2010wallpapers.com/ In addition to browsing and downloading Visual Studio themed wallpapers, you can also submit your own into the gallery to share with others.

Browsing Wallpaper Images

The site has dozens of wallpaper images that you can browse through and choose from.  They range from the cool and abstract:

As developers we often spend a large part of our day staring at code within Visual Studio.  If you are like me, after awhile the default VS text color scheme starts to get a little boring.

The good news is that Visual Studio allows you to completely customize the editor background and text colors to whatever you want – allowing you to tweak them to create the experience that is “just right” for your eyes and personality.  You can then optionally export/import your color scheme preferences to an XML file via the Tools->Import and Export Settings menu command.