Cider November CTP Release Notes

Welcome to the November Community Technology Preview of Cider, the Visual Designer for the Windows Presentation Foundation. This is the Final release of the Visual Studio 2005 based ""CTPs"" of Cider. It is an incremental improvement over the September CTP The focus for this CTP is to release an updated toolset that is fully compatible with the RTM release of .Net Framework 3.0.

As in previous ""CTPs"", this release of Cider supports basic "form" creation and "XAML Preview". There are no new features in this CTP. All functionality is the same as our August and September releases.

This November CTP is the last planned release of Cider as an extension to Visual Studio 2005. Future ""CTPs"" of Cider will be available in the preview releases of the next full version of Visual Studio which is currently code named "Orcas". Features in Orcas will come online at various points during the development cycle so you may see differences from the features available today by installing the VS 2005 based CTP of Cider. The November CTP of Cider for Visual Studio 2005 will remain available to hold developers over until all the hard work we are doing today in Orcas is ready for prime time. We will continue to post announcements of our future Orcas Based "CTP" releases here on this site and at our MSDN forum.

Please give us your feedback!

Let us know what you like and what you don't like. What are the things that are missing today that stop you from using Cider? What are your "must have" features? Stop by and give us feedback on the MSDN forum for Cider

What's New in the November CTP

* Compatible with the ".Net Framework 3.0 RTM" Release. The November CTP is a refresh of our September CTP bits updated to be compatible with the .Net Framework 3.0 RTM release. All other features in the November CTP are identical to what we shipped in the August and September ""CTPs"". Please review the August CTP Release Notes for more details on the features present in that CTP release.

Uninstalling the September CTP

Before you install the November CTP please make sure you uninstall the September CTP or any previous Cider ""CTPs"".

Installing the November CTP

The Cider November CTP requires the RTM or November CTP releases of other components. And, of course, you'll need Visual Studio 2005
* .Net Framework 3.0
* Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for .Net Framework 3.0 (which includes Cider)
* Gry

Uninstalling the November CTP

Well, if you're "done" with Cider, or you've found a bug that is blocking your work, you have several options.

If you just don't want the designer to come up when you double-click a XAML file, you can right-click on the XAML file in the Solution Explorer, select "Open With…", then select the XML Editor and check the "Set as default" option. This will cause the XAML file to always open in the XML editor.

If there's some huge problem that you cannot work around and you cannot change the XAML file association, you can uninstall the entire Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" CTP. Go to "Add/Remove Programs" and uninstall something that looks like the "Visual Studio Code Name 'Orcas' Community Technology Preview - Development Tools for "".Net Framework 3.0""."

Both of these options will leave intact the original functionality of Visual Studio 2005.