vb.net 2005 enhancement and Modern Software Development WebCast Series

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnvs05/html/vbnet2005_preview.asp

My

For example, to play an audio file in Visual Basic 2005, rather than using DirectX or Win32 API calls, you could write this simple single line of code:My.Computer.Audio.Play("C:/Beep.wav") The My also adds functionality that returns many of the RAD features of Visual Basic 6 to the .NET development platform. For example, Visual Basic developers historically accessed forms by name, relying on the runtime engine to maintain a collection of all the available form classes. Using the new My.Forms object, developers can write code to open and interact with an instance of a form class created as part of a solution, like the following:My.Forms.HelpForm.Show() In addition, My supplies functionality that otherwise requires substantial code. For example, the following code demonstrates how you can use a single line of code to ping a computer:If My.Computer.Network.Ping("http://www.microsoft.com") Then MessageBox.Show("Microsoft's site is available.") End If

Edit and Continue

Quick development turnaround time has always been the hallmark of developing in Visual Basic, and programmers
who miss the edit and continue feature in Visual Basic 6 can rejoice—it's back! In Visual Basic 2005,
you can make changes to your code during debugging, back up the code instruction pointer if you want,
and re-execute lines of code with the modified content. While in Break mode, you can modify code or fix bugs;
almost any code modification will work. (Of course, some modifications force you to switch back to design mode
and rebuild the project and there's no way around it.) This change for Visual Studio 2005 has huge numbers of
Visual Basic developers cheering!
 
Modern Software Development
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/community/webcasts/modern/default.aspx