The new Visual Studio plugins are "a continuation of our version 1.4 efforts to improve the development experience for smart device developers using the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework," the company explained. "SDF 2.0 has a significant number of changes, improvements, and enhancement over the previous versions." Chris Tacke, principal partner of OpenNETCF, describes it as "hugely rearchitected."
The SDF 2.0 Extensions for Visual Studio are an affordable set of plugins for Visual Studio 2005, the company says.
More specifically, according to a February
MSDN article written by OpenNETCF co-founder Chris Tacke, "the Smart Device Framework provides many of the classes, properties, and methods that are available in the full .NET Framework, plus a large complement of classes that are specific to the Windows CE environment. Essentially, the Smart Device Framework is a framework that enables .NET Compact Framework developers to provide more feature-rich solutions with less time to market than with the .NET Compact Framework alone."
As with
previous versions, SDF 2.0 comes with complete source code, allowing developers and organizations to have full control over componentization and library size, the company said.
Other key features of SDF 2.0 include:
- New Visual Studio 2005 templates generate new projects that use the SDF references quickly and easily
- Visual Studio 2005 add-in menus to give quick access to OpenNETCF support and features
- Visual Studio 2005 intellisense and designer support for all controls
Regarding the decision to begin charging for the software, OpenNETCF Consulting says it launched OpenNETCF.org "in the spirit of the Open Source Movement." Chris Tacke
explains the company's decision to sell the product, rather than giving it away for free, on his blog:
"So, why the decision to start charging anyway? The answer in simple terms is growth. First, we needed to grow the SDF itself. We needed to grow its feature set, since CF 2.0 made a lot of it obsolete. ... Second, we needed to grow our market. While it may come as a surprise to individual and small-shop developers, large enterprises are wary of anything that's free. ... Third, we needed to grow our revenue so we could grow OpenNETCF. OpenNETCF is now a real company, with real developers who have real families that have real bills."
For more information, or to purchase the SDF 2.0, visit
OpenNETCF.org.
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