Create better Web applications by writing less code, thanks to the many new server controls in ASP .NET 2.0.

Visual Studio 2005 now lets you debug 64-bit applications with nearly identical capabilities as in 32-bit application debugging.

Rapidly convert your 32-bit ASP .NET 2.0 code into a native 64-bit application, without and recoding or manual recompiling.

Easily check your pages for compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines using Visual Studio 2005.

Improvements have been made in the bookmark management system through the addition of named bookmarks support and organization of bookmarks using folders.

Manage your project’s images, icons, strings, and other resources easily with the new Resource Designer in Visual Studio 2005.

Now you can more easily manage user preferences, database connections, and other information your application needs to store on the computer where it is installed.

Assemblies are the building blocks of the .NET Framework; they form the fundamental unit of functionality for deployment, version control, reuse, activation scoping, and security permissions.

You no longer need to edit a text file to customize your application’s assembly information, now you can use a handy new dialog box.

If your code fails to compile, it’s now easier than ever to identify and fix the problem in Visual Basic 2005.

The Pocket PC has a feature that can automatically launch an application when any new external storage is detected, such as the insertion of a CompactFlash or Secure Digital card. This feature is typically used to provide an auto-installation feature for software.

It is frustrating and inefficient to lose your unsaved work, so Visual Studio 2005 can now automatically recover your work using periodically saved backups of your files.

The Visual Studio 2005 Integrated Development Environment (IDE) includes Smart Tag support for auto-using statements.

With the Visual Studio 2005 source code editor, Intellisense and new features for formatting, navigating and validating your HTML markup are available throughout your files.

Publish and administer Web sites more easily with the powerful combination of ASP .NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005.

You can develop and debug database objects for your application in Visual Studio 2005, even if you don't have access to SQL Server 2005.

Team Foundation Server is ideal for geographically distributed teams because of its server-based nature.

Now you can see at a glance where you have made changes to your code, and which of those changes have been saved.

Now cleaning all those unwanted intermediate files out of your solution is a one-click operation.

Publish your ClickOnce application easily to a central location from Visual Studio 2005, and let client machines install it from there.

Installing applications on client machines has never been simpler for users and administrators, thanks to the ClickOnce installation technology introduced in Visual Studio 2005.

View in one place the source code of any type you click on with the new Code Definition window in Visual C++ and Visual C#.

Understanding how methods call other methods is an important aspect of any performance investigation. The Caller/Callee View in Visual Studio Team System helps you to investigate these relationships quickly and easily.

Now you have a new way to efficiently re-use code that has already been written by inserting code snippets, a new Intellisense feature in Visual Studio 2005.

You can incorporate COM components into your .NET Framework application by using COM interop tools to import the relevant COM types.

Using vcbuild.exe, you can automate your .sln and .vcproj builds.

Dynamic compilation of common file types is performed by build providers included in ASP .NET 2.0, and you can easily add support for additional file extensions.

Now you can compress your streaming data using the new compression API in the .NET Framework 2.0.

Visual Studio 2005 make it easier for you to determine and set the minimum security permissions your ClickOnce application needs, and to debug your application with exactly those permissions.

The configuration API for ASP .NET developers begins with the WebConfigurationManager class in the System.Web.Configuration namespace.

Visual Studio Team System allows you avoid hard-coding database connection strings into ASP .NET pages. All data connection dialogs and wizards provides the option of storing database connection strings in an application's Web.Config file.

The whole process of laying out controls on the page has been simplified dramatically in Visual Studio 2005.

Use this wizard to easily create a Visual Studio 2005 project from application code you already have so you can view, edit, build, and debug your code files using Intellisense and all the other features that make you more productive.

Now you can extend the Visual C++ 2005 project system to support your own external build tools, simply by authoring an XML file that defines custom build rules.

Develop a data access layer for your multi-tiered Web application more easily using the WYSIWYG designer in Visual Studio 2005.

Use the new class of data source controls in ASP .NET 2.0 to easily access and bind to many different types of data sources.

The new Data Sources window manages all your data sources for you in one convenient location.

You can easily bind properties on your forms to application settings in Visual Studio 2005 in order to implement, for example, persistent updates to user preferences.

If you are displaying a small grid of read-only values, or if you are enabling a user to edit a table with millions of records, the new DataGridView control is easier to use and much more powerful than DataGrid.

Improved DataTips in Visual Studio 2005 bring you a whole new expandable way to view the contents of variables while debugging, right from your code window.

With the debugger's Display Attributes feature, you can identify the most useful information about a type you've developed and display this information in the debugger.

Save debugging time by changing code while in Break mode.

When viewing STL containers in Watch windows, or just by hover the mouse over the variable, you will only see the useful information not the whole structure’s layout.

Test and debug your code on the spot in the Immediate window without having to leave the design environment.

Visual Studio 2005 will now perform cleanly for you when you follow the security best practice of logging in to your workstation regularly as a least-privilege user, not an administrator.

Visual C++ developers no longer need to use different tools to develop for desktops and for smart devices. With Visual Studio 2005, you can use the same tools and methods for SmartPhone and Pocket PC development as for desktop and Web-based projects.

What does it take to create a Web page that dynamically displays information from a database? Just drag and drop ASP .NET 2.0 controls.

Docking your windows where you want them is faster and easier in Visual Studio 2005, thanks to docking guides that show you exactly where the window you are dragging is about to land.

You will find the new Help Search is easier to filter, easier to use, and more accurate in Visual Studio 2005.

The IDE offers improved support for users moving from Emacs or Brief editors by providing a remapping of the keyboard shortcuts and editor behavior as close to these editors’ shortcuts as possible to allow a better experience during the transition.

You can more easily control more Visual C# build settings in the Project Designer of Visual Studio 2005.

Device emulators are testing environments that simulate specific devices. Emulators run on the developer's PC, so that testing can be performed without the device.

An event is a message sent by an object to signal the occurrence of an action. The action could be caused by user interaction, such as a key press; or it could be triggered by some other program logic.

When an exception occurs in the debugger, the new Exception Assistant helps you identify and remedy the problem quickly.

If you write your custom error pages using mobile controls, ASP .NET can be configured to format the error page appropriately for the different mobile devices that it supports.

In addition to using predefined or downloaded templates, you can also create new templates from projects you have open in Visual Studio 2005.

The new expression handlers in ASP .NET 2.0 simplify the job of substituting values into a page depending on conditions at the time the page runs.

You can create a full-featured Web site in any folder you like with Visual Studio 2005.

Just right-click to Find All References to a class or member in your code.

If you need to write code that targets a particular browser or HTML standard, Visual Studio 2005 makes it easy.

It’s easy to make your code look like your own with all the new formatting options in Visual Studio 2005.

Now you can easily deploy and manage a Web site on a remote server using FTP.

If your mobile application will be used by people speaking more than one language, or from more than one culture, build it with localization in mind. Globalization adds support for input, display, and output of a defined set of language scripts that relate to specific geographic areas.

Now you can easily view reflected source code for compiled objects that have no source code available in your project.

Health monitoring is the process of identifying the conditions that contribute to system failure and taking preventive action to keep failures from occurring or recurring.

Looking for no-nonsense instructions and examples of how to perform a particular task in a particular language? The new How Do I page has the information you need, categorized and convenient.

Now you can control how code generated by Visual Studio 2005 should be formatted.

Visual Studio 2005 respects your HTML. Format your HTML code any way you like, and count on Visual Studio 2005 not to change it.

Make your application look its best with the huge new collection of icons and other images now included in Visual Studio 2005.

You can now edit templates for complex controls much more easily in the designer view of Visual Studio 2005.

The Insert Table dialog has been improved to allow you more control over table features while adding it to the design surface.

For a type in the view, it displays the base types from which the type is derived (in "Base Types") and a list of the other types that are deriving from the selected type (in "Derived Types").

The IntelliSense feature has been expanded in Visual Studio 2005 to help you complete all kinds of web development tasks more quickly and easily.

IntelliSense is the technology that pops up context-sensitive hints and options while you are coding, and now while you are debugging as well.

Simplify your debugging experience by choosing to ignore third party code and debug just your own code in Visual Studio 2005.

Live Browsing allows the user to browse definitions and references without the need to create browsing files at build time.

If your project works with an IIS Web server, Visual Studio 2005 makes managing your project much easier.

Localization is the process of translating your application for a given culture or locale. The process consists primarily of translating the user interface into the local vernacular.

Master Pages are templates you can create to control the look and feel of your content pages.

The Message Queuing (MSMQ) service in Microsoft® Windows® CE .NET makes it possible to send messages asynchronously to other devices, across networks or the Internet, even when the other device is temporarily offline.

The ASP .NET Visual Studio Team System Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Admin tool provides administrators with an easy-to-use interface for changing connection strings on servers.

SQL Server Mobile replaces SQL Server CE as the compact database designed for smart devices.

People use all kinds of mobile devices today to access the internet, and it may be important for your Web site to offer each visitor an optimal experience no matter what screen size, bandwidth, or browser they are using.

Multi-platform support enables developers to target not only x86 but also IA64 and x64 from any x86 building environment.

The build system allows execution of more than one build at the same time if the machine has more than one processor by sending each build request to a different processor.

Visual Studio 2005 includes full support for developing mobile device applications using C/C++. By using Visual Studio 2005, device developers automatically have access to the wide variety of productivity features like Intellisense, integrated testing, access to the rich set of Team System features, and much more.

Windows Mobile software provides networking and communications capabilities that enable devices to connect and communicate with other devices and people over both wireless and wired networks.

ASP .NET contains a number of new controls for creating fully-featured, interactive Web pages that are viewable on a number of mobile devices. The ASP .NET 2.0 System.Web.Mobile namespace is devoted specifically to mobile Web development.

A nullable variable type is a structure that combines a variable type with a flag to indicate if the value of the field is unknown, or null. Visual Design Studio provides complete and integrated support for nullability across all types of variables, even value types. Nullable types are indicated by adding a "?" behind another variable type (for example, int?).

The Data Sources Window is a new tool window that displays selected objects within your project that you can use to create data bound forms. Simply drag and drop your business objects onto form controls to bind them.

Now you can create custom business objects and use them as data sources to more easily create powerful 3-layer Web applications with less code.

When debugging MPI applications, the Debugger System makes transparent to the user the fact that the application actually executes over multiple machines.

The Personalization API allows for the persistent storage of structured, user-specific profile information in conjunction with an HTTP module.

In Solution Explorer users can switch between the project view and the physical directory view.

Dynamic compilation, or precompilation, of your web pages is an excellent feature of ASP .NET 2.0. Precompilation makes it easy to change an .aspx page, save the page, and request the page in the browser without having to recompile the entire web site.

You can restrict the breakpoints to only being set in certain processes and threads by specifying a conditional expression based on the name or id of the processes or the threads.

Providers can extend the powerful features of Visual Studio Team System by adding their own ASP .NET application services that integrate seamlessly to give complete control over the tools and environment.

From getting started to debugging to deploying, everything about Web projects is streamlined in Visual Studio 2005.

The Extract Interface feature allows you to select a group of existing type members to create a new interface abstraction.

This feature allows you to define a new method from a selection of code statements.

Generate Method Stub refactoring creates a code place-holder that will be ready for your code when you are ready to define the method.

This refactoring removes a selected argument from the current list of parameters.

This refactoring allows you to rename a code token (method name, field, local variable, etc.) throughout a project.

The Reorder Parameters refactoring provides the developer with a way to easily and automatically change the order of a member’s arguments.

Registration-Free COM is different from traditional COM in that it doesn't require components to be described separately in the system registry. Instead, it stores this information in an XML manifest file located in the same folder as the application.

The registry is a system-wide storage area for information about applications, users, and default system settings. Applications can use registry keys for storing specific information that needs to be preserved after the application is closed, and access that same information when the application is reloaded.

Visual Studio 2005 searches for hidden text in code files, such as collapsed code regions.

For applications that need to communicate with multiple connected-serial devices, the Windows Mobile Device Emulators available in Visual Studio Team System support configuration of several serial ports.

Developers can extend and implement their own custom server controls based on the ASP .NET control set.

Property sheets are collections of property values that can be associated with any number of project configurations.

Different controls have different sets of tasks associated with them, common tasks are readily available through Smart Tags.

When you include a rich ASP.NET control in your Web application, there can be a large number of properties to configure for that control.

Multiple matching source file names cause no confusion for the Visual Studio 2005 debugger, thanks to its new checksum feature.

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Mobile Edition is compact database for rapidly developing applications that extends enterprise data management capabilities to mobile devices. You must use the SQL Server Mobile Edition version if you want to target Smartphones or make use of Visual Studio 2005's new data designer features.

If you ever need to debug code that uses Standard Template Library (STL) containers, this new feature in Visual Studio 2005 will dramatically improve your ability to visualize the data.

Application domains are created and run inside a process, and provide a unit of isolation for the common language runtime. With the .NET Framework 2.0, you can unload application domains that are not needed.

Always when debugging on different versions of operating systems or different versions of your own application, it is important to rely on good support for symbols in the debugger.

When Web pages include complex structures such as multiple nested HTML tables, it is easy to get lost in the source code jumble of nested rows and cells.

Now using tracepoints in Visual Studio 2005 you can quickly and easily associate a custom action with any breakpoint.

If you work with complex types such as datasets and long XML files, you know that these are unwieldy to view in the debugger watch window.

The Visual Studio 2005 managed User Interface (UI) device designer can be described as "what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG). It offers developers a customized design environment for any of the available Windows Mobile device display sizes and orientations, and displays the application exactly as it will appear on the device.

All of the HTML code generated by Visual Studio 2005 can now be validated as XHTML compliant, meeting the W3C standards for XHTML 1.0 transitional, XHTML 1.0 frameset, or XHTML 1.1 markup language.

In Visual C++, when hovering over a managed function-call or object type in the editor, the xml documentation associated to it is extracted from the metadata and is displayed in the tooltip below its definition.