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Some Unique Features of Visual C# Express

By and large, the Express products are slimmed-down versions of their Visual Studio 2008 counter-

parts and are primarily targeted at .NET hobbyists and students. Like SharpDevelop, Visual C# 2008

Express provides various object browsing tools, a Windows Forms designer, the Add References dia-

log box, IntelliSense capabilities, and code expansion templates.

However, Visual C# 2008 Express offers a few (important) features currently not available in

SharpDevelop, including the following:

• Rich support for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) XAML applications

• IntelliSense for new C# 2008 syntactical constructs including lambda expressions and LINQ

query statements

• The ability to program Xbox 360 and PC video games using the freely available Microsoft

XNA Game Studio

Consider Figure 2-15, which illustrates using Visual C# Express to author the XAML markup for

a WPF project.

Figure 2-15.

Visual C# Express has integrated support for .NET 3.0 and .NET 3.5 APIs.

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Because the look and feel of Visual C# 2008 Express is so similar to that of Visual Studio 2008

(and, to some degree, SharpDevelop), I do not provide a walk-through of this particular IDE here. If

you do wish to learn more about the product, look up my article “An Introduction to Programming

Using Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition” online at http://msdn.microsoft.com. While this

article is based on Visual C# 2005 Express, a majority of the topics are identical.