So Visual Studio 2008 is finally here! After what seems like a long time using Betas, VS 2005 extensions and various other weirdly named WIPs, it's great that the full, final version has arrived.
If you haven't tried it yet and aren't ready to commit from your wallet then you'll probably be pleased to hear that VS 2008 also has a free, downloadable Express Edition. Well, "Editions" - as there are VB, C#, C++ and Web versions. The download site for the VB Express Edition is here.
One of the very first things I did was to fire up a new WPF application :
However, I was a bit surprised to find that as soon as I tried to run this project I had an immediate compilation error:
As the message says, "Option Strict On disallows implicit conversions from 'System.Windows.Application' to 'WpfApplication1.Application'. (Obviously the name of the WPF Application will be different if you have already changed the project name to something more meaningful).
Having got into the good habit of always starting out with Option Strict On I didn't really want to "fix" this problem by turning Option Strict Off. Luckily the solution for this little setback is simple.
Double click the error message in the Errors list so that you are taken to the MyWpfExtension.vb file, which is where the problem resides. You will see the all-too-familiar wavy blue line under the code:
Return Global.System.Windows.Application.Current
Replace this with:
Return CType(Global.System.Windows.Application.Current, Application)
which explicitly makes the required cast and you will be good to go.
Of course, this only fixes the current project. For a longer term fix, you can create a new template. To do this, first of all make the code change as described above. Then select Export Template from the File Menu in Visual Studio:
Accept the default settings in the first window. Then in the next window, edit the Template Name (I recommend that you create one with a name that indicates that it is a revised version). Add a description if desired.
You can't actually change the output location from this window, so leave that as is (for now anyway).
Click the Finish button and you will see the created template zip file in that default folder. Copy that newly created zip file and navigate to :
My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual Basic
Create a new folder in there and name it "Windows". Paste the zip file into this new folder. Don't unzip the file.
Close down Visual Studio 2008 and re-open it. If all has gone according to plan, you will now see the additional template in the "My Templates" area.
You can click on this to create a new WPF application that will run fine with Option Strict On.
I'm sure this will be fixed in SP1, but it's one of those minor things that might throw you if you didn't know about it.