By Popular Demand [Jack Gudenkauf]

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We just released VS 2008 and .Net 3.5 Beta 2 (code name "Orcas").

You may download the release here.

What’s new?

1. UI extensibility

By far the most requested feature has been UI extensibility built upon the Add-In model.

We are very happy to announce that we have delivered a solution!

We have added a Native Handle Contract (in System.AddIn.Contract) upon which, the WPF and CLR Add-In teams have built an implementation for enabling an application to Host WPF Add-In’s!

We will be posting more on the subject including a sample(s) showing isolated (i.e., Cross AppDomain) WPF Add-In’s.

Special Thanks to the WPF team for making this happen!

2. Direct Connect Optimization

We have provided an optimization to Add-In activation.

For Hosts and Add-in’s having the same view of each other (e.g., in V1) that forgo unloadability and share the same security context (i.e., run in the same AppDomain), you can choose to optimize the Add-In loading behavior (AddInToken.EnableDirectConnect) by not instantiating the Adapters.

3. Custom Qualification

We now support the ability to add a custom attribute (i.e., QualificationData) to your Add-In and/or Pipeline segments.

There are a number of clever things you could do with this ability. You could provide your own custom qualification logic for things such as Add-in’s that use this Attribute to inform you they qualify themselves as only running in the default AppDomain, etc…

The attribute data is available via the AddInToken.

4. Find Add-In

We have added a new method (AddInStore.FindAddIn()) that enables you to find an Add-In given a fully qualified path and type.

Among other uses, this feature allows you to forgo the demand for an Add-In Attribute used for Discovery.

This feature also supports scenarios where you may not know the Add-In location until Run Time (e.g., Add-In’s deployed via Click-Once).

5. Passing and Re-Adapting Add-In’s (ContractAdapter)

One of the many benefits of the Adapter model is the ability to Re-Adapt. Sharing Add-In’s without the demand to Discover and instantiate a new instance is a powerful capability.

We provide facilities to pass the Add-in around and let each consumer of it choose its own view and let the system find the appropriate adapter between the activated add-in and the requested view.

6. Add-in Activation Security enum

We have added a new enum value for activating the Add-in using the Hosts Security level (i.e., AddInSecurityLevel.Host).

7. View Hierarchies

We now support a hierarchy of view types and the ability to attribute them for discovery.

We will be posting more on these features in the coming months. Stay tuned.