why are there still COM controls in VS.Net 2005?

  • Thread starter Thread starter PJ6
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PJ6

I really thought they'd rewrite that buggy combo box when they released
2005. But no. I'm looking at the same piece of crap with a slightly
different wrapper around it. Do they plan on getting rid of these COM
control bases any time soon?

Paul
 
I think they are based on Win32 - actually I think the entirety of Windows
is based on Win32 and this is an ancient (relatively speaking) sub-system.
Still, I'm not sure why they are neccessary in the .NET environment, simple
as it is to produce user controls that do the same thing, but better.
Perhaps they are being replaced over time?

Who knows - maybe an MVP can answer..........................
 
OK that begs another question - I wonder how tempted they are to rewrite all
of Windows using DotNet. Maybe it would take 10 years yusing the old tools,
but VS.Net is so much better than what they had before. I hope someone high
up at MS is making a case for a complete rewrite because we need some major
housecleaning.

Paul
 
Not sure what combobox control you're refering to, but the standard
System.Windows.Forms.ComboBox is not COM based. It's a wrapper around the
standard Win32 control. I agree that it suffers from a few problems though.

/claes
 
Well I think that is a good long-term goal. It isn't viable in terms of
performance right now though as the recent Vista problems have demonstrated.
Also consider Windows big strength: companies can invest millions in their
code-bases and be reasonably sure future versions of the OS won't break them
(too badly!). So I don't think you could get rid of Win32 post-vista
without causing a lot of collateral damage ;).
 
OK that begs another question - I wonder how tempted they are to
rewrite all of Windows using DotNet. Maybe it would take 10 years
yusing the old tools, but VS.Net is so much better than what they had
before. I hope someone high up at MS is making a case for a complete
rewrite because we need some major housecleaning.

Paul
Click to expand...

I'd be surprised if they go down that road, what with dotnet's
environment being based on a virtual machine - that obviously needs an
operating environment to sit within...

If I had to guess, I would have thought the foundations of the operating
system will stay as they are, but we'll see more and more of the user
interface etc becoming based around dotnet.


As for a complete re-write, it's not going to happen. Microsoft will not
be so keen to abandon their existing code base, not to mention user base
- as any "complete rewrite" is not going to be compatible with existing
software...

Personally, I think the future is eventually going to lie in the whole
virtual machine approach - we'll be developing for frameworks such as
dotnet and Java, and will come to care less and less about what's
actually running the show at the operating environment level...

Martin.
 
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