Catching Up On the Server Side
Fat and Rich—Furthering the Lead
The Microsoft Mobility Mission
Forms, Clients, and Developer Kudos
End-User Productivity Really Does Matter
James Governor
September 24, 2002
Microsoft hasn't stood still when it comes to forms developers either. Because we are discussing rich client development we should also point to a couple of improvements that are currently exciting the VB faithful. Never mind XML Web Services, transactional apps, and new programming models—just look at these GUI tools! Visual Studio .NET offers a new forms-designer environment with plenty of bells and whistles and productivity enhancements.
Many of these are seemingly prosaic—automatic anchoring of controls when the user resizes a window, for example. The developer wants to allow the user to reset the size of a form, whilst maintaining its placement. For Visual Basic 6 this was a hack. With Visual Studio .NET it's all done automatically. Such things may seem small beans, but this development earned a round of applause at recent Microsoft developer conferences.
For a "transactional" application developer, a hardcore J2EE geek, or Linux coder, or any other class of non-GUI obsessed developer—that example probably sounds dumb. But for a developer intent on rich-client user experiences, they make life a lot easier. That is what they call the Microsoft advantage, and no other major vendor is stepping up to the plate to erode that advantage. Of course not everything is perfect in Microsoft land but Visual Studio .NET is a stunning return to form for the vendor, allowing the production of far more scalable server-side apps, and far richer client-side apps.
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