November 8, 2005
@ 06:41 PM
Comments [4]
RSS Bandit & .NET Framework v2.0

Over the weekend I got the following mail from an RSS Bandit user. The body of the message read

Have a suggestion on a set of blog entries (or articles for msdn or whatever) related to moving rss bandit to .net 2.0 / vs 2005. I’ve taken an application that uses the xpexplorerbar and imported it directly to vs 2005. I’m unable to compile due to a p/invoke issue (with LoadBitmap I believe). There is some documentation on MSDN for this, I’m sure it will be simple to correct.

In any case, RSS Bandit really is a better Windows Forms reference app than anything Microsoft is shipping with the product. It would be a very educational and worthwhile effort to document the steps required to move RSS Bandit to the new technology. As far as I’m concerned, Microsoft should champion the effort. Is there any chance this could happen?

We don't plan to move to v2.0 of the .NET Framework in the near future. RSS Bandit has a decent sized user base, with over 200,000 downloads this year. Most of these users are on v1.1 of the .NET Framework. We don't plan to move until a large number of our user base has migrated to v2.0 of the .NET Framework. Once this happens, we'll consider moving our development to .NET Framework v2.0. I assume this is about 1 to 2 years away.

I hate to promise anything so far in advance but if I have time after we port our application I will document some of the trickier issues in migrating to v2.0 of the .NET Framework. More than likely it'll just be a bunch of postsin my blog as opposed to a focused article on MSDN. I'm already so far behind when it comes to articles that I don't want to promise any more. 


 

Categories: RSS Bandit
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"RSS Bandit " (Radicalmente) [Trackback]
"RSS Bandit " (Di .NET e di altre amenita') [Trackback]
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Wednesday, 09 November 2005 02:55:24 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
How will you know if your users have updated to 2.0? What about the possibility of offering both a 1.1 and 2.0 version (for the forward thinkers)?
Ben Harris
Wednesday, 09 November 2005 03:14:14 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Ben,
Lots of RSS Bandit users are subscribed to my feed and the user agent string indicates what versions of the .NET Framework they are running (just like the Internet Explorer user agent does). Once I see that a large proportion of them are now reporting that they are running v2.0 of the .NET Framework then I'll consider a switch.

There is no possibility that we will maintain two code bases and have versions for both v1.1 and v2.0 of the .NET Framework.
Dare Obasanjo
Wednesday, 09 November 2005 08:01:51 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Dare, if you are moving to .NET 2.0 don't forget that unless users are running the latest OS service pack, they will have to go through Windows Genuine Advantage only to download one of the .NET 2.0 prerequisites.
I think Microsoft is betraying every client .NET app developer out there with this (.NET was supposed to be easy to deploy), but I'll follow your RSS bandit - .NET 2.0 story avidly anyhow... ;-)
Stephane Rodriguez
Thursday, 10 November 2005 03:49:06 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Are you going to at least try to build and/or run RSSBandit under .NET 2.0?

While I can see why you might not want to force the upgrade (although, frankly, that would be my preference) - for those that want to use (only) the 2.0 framework and/or want to build directly from source, things should still work.

While this sounds like "versions for both v1.1 and v2.0" I think what you really meant by that statement is a version that uses generics and new WinForms controls, and one that doesn't. That's a lot different than making sure that your v1.1 code at least builds & runs under 2.0.

P.S. can you package up the source code for the Alpha releases in a ZIP file too?
J. Daniel Smith
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