VSTO

[Richard Schollar]

Howdy Everyone

Has anyone made use of VSTO and care to share their thoughts on the technology? I'm particularly interested to hear from non-professional VB coders who specifically don't have access to either the VSTO application nor Visual Studio 2005 SE ie people that use VSTO perhaps thru VS Express.

With Microsoft putting it forward as a VBA replacement, I was somewhat surprised to see just how much VSTO costs for a licence and thus doubt it will ever replace VBA as long as it is the preserve of a few rather than the many Excel users out there.

Your thoughts on the matter are appreciated

Richard

 

[SydneyGeek]

I'd be interested to hear as well. Got as far as buying Gerry Verschuuren's book on VSTO and VBA to get an idea of the differences, then enquired about buying VSTO and stopped when I found it would be around $1400 AUS.

It just seems to be another roadblock out there -- none of my clients use it, and I wasn't going to shell out that sort of money on something that (for now) I consider to be a curiosity.

Another thing... VSTO requires the .NET Framework. Many users don't have this installed. Until there is a big move to Vista, which installs the framework by default, there may not be too many people switching...

My 2 cents

Denis

 

[Richard Schollar]

Hi Denis

I recently bought a VSTO book entitled 'VSTO for mere mortals' - since I am a mere mortal - and started reading. One of the first few paragraphs states that they wanted to write a book not for the professional developer but for all those VBA developers out there who do it in addition to their main job (ie like me). Great! I thought - but then they start off by saying you need VSTO or VS 2005 SE!!!!

I'd bet my right arm there are very (very) few people out there who aren't professional developers who do have VSTO and/or VS 2005 SE. No way am I going to shell out $$$ just to see what it can do.

VSTO the future?? Hah! That's laughable until it comes bundled with Excel/Office like VBA is.

 

[SydneyGeek]

VSTO the future?? Hah! That's laughable until it comes bundled with Excel/Office like VBA is.

Me too. They either make it accessible or forget it -- or use VSTO for those developers creating non-Office apps that need to interact with Office.

Denis