VS 2005 vs 2003 - Backwards Compatible / Worth It?

Im finally considering the move to Visual Studio 2005 but am concerned with backwards compatability.  For development  I  have no issues with VS 2005 and all the niceties it brings but our production box is still making using of the old approach of VS 2003 (web.config, .NET v1.1, etc).  I do not want production to break.

My only experience with VS2005 is when i tried accessing my 2K3 solution it insisted on upgrading it.  I did experience an issue on compiling with it; i copied the sharepoint webpart .dll to production and it refused to accept it claiming the .dll was untrusted even tho on compling in 2K3 the .dll was accepted (both solution types used the same .snk key file).

What are your thoughts on moving up to VS 2K5.  For the moment we'll still be outputting .Net v1.1 code.  Perhaps a couple .net 2.0 will be produced by year's end.

Tx

I did C++ migration, which meant some ifdef blocks and config tweaks.  Nothing serious, though.  I don't know about managed stuff though.

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/06/20/vs-2008-multi-targeting-support.aspx

You may want to just jump to Visual Studio 2008 once it comes out. It has a multi-targeting feature that allows you to target .NET 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5. I expect they will try to keep this going for future versions of the framework.

Also, if you like ASP.NET 1.1 projects you can use Web Application Projects which were included with the latest service pack for VS 2005.

Look that here...

http://www.asp.net/downloads/default.aspx?tabid=62

You may want to give the Website Projects (not Web Application) a try. That was the model that was intended for ASP.NET 2.0 and it does have some features that you cannot get the other way. One is page-level compilation which is great during development. You can work on a single page at a time and when you want to preview it you do not have to wait for the whole website to compile.