Visual Basic, along with its Application Framework, is supported in .NET 5 and Visual Studio 16.8! Visual Studio 16.8 includes the Windows Forms Designer, so Visual Basic is ready for you to migrate existing applications or create new applications.

While .NET Core has had Visual Basic since the first release, and WinForms since it was released in .NET Core 3.1, it did not include the Application Framework library and WinForms Designer support Visual Basic programmers expect. .NET 5 is the next version of .NET Core and we think .NET 5 is ready for you to migrate existing .NET Framework apps or create new WinForms applications.

We’re excited about the updates for Visual Basic in .NET 5, but first a reminder that you can base your decision to migrate to .NET 5 on whether or not you want its new features and how you need to interop with .NET 5 applications. The .NET Framework will be supported as part of Windows for a very long time. New features will not be added to .NET Framework. New features, including new WinForms features, will be added only to .NET 5 and future versions.

Visual Studio 16.8 and .NET 5 include the following updates for WinForms development in .NET 5:

• Designer Event Handling support: Visual Basic events are hooked up with a Handles keyword on the code behind method. This presented significant challenges to the WinForms designer and did not work correctly in .NET Core 3.1. This has been fixed.
• Application Framework: The Visual Basic Application Framework provides event-based startup, meaning you don’t need a Sub Main for WinForms applications. A new version of the Application Framework is available in .NET 5.
• Single Instance applications: .NET 5 introduces Single Instance Applications to the .NET Core family. The new version also has updated logic that should work well in more scenarios.
• Updates to Visual Studio dialogs: Updates have been made to a few dialogs to support Visual Basic features in the new project format. This work is ongoing.
• Visual Basic WinForms template: We waited to add the template to Visual Studio until you could create WinForms applications with the Application Framework. This new template is the default in Visual Studio, and available via a switch on dotnet new in the .NET CLI.
• Additional Visual Basic Runtime features: The last few versions of .NET Core have ported features of the Visual Basic Runtime. We believe this work is complete and that missing features can’t work the same way on .NET 5.

Read more: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotne...l-studio-16-8/

Posted By: Brink
24 Nov 2020