Visual Studio 11 RC (and .Net 4.5 RC) out now!

Visual Studio 11 RC is here, and actually it’s now called “Visual Studio 2012 RC”.

Obligatory link: Download VS11 (VS 2012)

Also for interest, here is (pasted from the .Net 4.5 RC release notes) the section about WF4 that may be useful if you are looking for version upgrade bugs in custom designers or rehosted WF designer applications. (Got a bug to report? Please file by Microsoft Connect, not this blog. Winking smile)

1.3.10.1 Some of the new features in the Workflow Designer may cause issues with existing solutions

In the .NET Framework 4.5 RC, the Workflow Designer includes the following changes:

  • The shortcut menu is now available when multiple activities are selected.
  • In an activity designer, the area that can be dragged is now the header of the designer instead of being the whole designer. In the FlowDecision and FlowSwitch designers, the area that can be dragged is still the whole designer.
  • Behavior change for multi-selection with Ctrl key pressed: In the .NET Framework 4, the selection is canceled on mouse down. In the .NET Framework 4.5 RC, the selection is canceled on mouse up. Selection still happens on mouse down.
  • Activity designers now support activity delegates. For more information, see "How To: Define and consume activity delegates in the Workflow Designer".
  • The variable and argument designers now support the shortcut menu. The shortcut menu has items for deleting variables and arguments, and working with annotations. For more information, see How To: Add comments to a workflow in the Workflow Designer.
  • Previously, the MetadataStore class did not support adding an attribute on a generic property of a generic type definition. This is now supported.
  • The ModelItemDictionary class now supports a null key.
  • Previously, the ModelItem.Parents property contained items that were not in the model tree. Now, all objects in ModelItem.Parents are valid objects that are in the model tree.
  • Previously, when a Case was selected in the designer for the Switch activity, the keyboard focus went to the activity in the selected Case, and the activity was highlighted. Now, the activity is highlighted, but the keyboard focus does not change.
  • Previously, if just one character was entered in an expression text box, the designer treated the value as a constant of type Char. Now, the expression is treated as a variable or argument name.
  • Previously, the type browser showed types in referenced assemblies that had dependencies on unreferenced assemblies. Now, types that have dependencies on unreferenced assembles do not appear until the dependent assemblies are referenced.
  • The following types and members are now obsolete:
    • Most of the properties in the System.Activities.Presentation.Services.ModelChangedEventArgs class are obsolete. Use the ModelChangeInfo property instead of the obsolete properties.
    • In the System.Activities.Presentation.DragDropHelper class, the following methods have been made obsolete by new multi-select features:
      • DoDragMove(WorkflowViewElement, Point) - Use DoDragMove(IEnumerable<WorkflowViewElement>, Point) instead.
      • GetDroppedObject(DependencyObject, DragEventArgs, EditingContext) - Use GetDroppedObjects(DependencyObject, DragEventArgs, EditingContext) instead.
      • GetDraggedModelItem(DragEventArgs) - Use GetDraggedModelItems(DragEventArgs) instead.
      • GetCompositeView(DragEventArgs) - Use GetCompositeView(WorkflowViewElement) instead.
      • SetDragDropCompletedEffects(DragEventArgs, DragDropEffects) - Use SetDragDropMovedViewElements(DragEventArgs, IEnumerable<WorkflowViewElement>) instead.
      • GetDragDropCompletedEffects(DataObject) - Use GetDragDropMovedViewElements(DataObject) instead.