Answer 1

Hey Frank,

Visual Studios 2008 has a new feature called Multi-targeting. This feature enables you to have the ability to control which  version of the .net framework to use in your project. It allows you to use multiple versions of the framework from within the same environment.

When you choose a particular framework the IDE will be automatically change the surroundings (controls, dialog boxs, even intellisense etc.) to accomodate the chosen    framework. 

Check out Amanda Silvers blog entry about VS 2008 Beta 1 Codenamed Orcas features including multi-targeting for more information.

Hope that helps.

Thanks

Saaid Khan

Answer 2

Yes Multitargettting is a new feature which will allow you to target V2.0, 3.0 and 3.5 frameworks.  

For Orcas, all of these targets, use the V3.5 compiler  but change the references to each of the frameworks but through using Orcas you also get some neat new IDE features such as Intellisense everywhere and type inference.

Answer 3

Answer 4

I wouldn't hold my breath on that request. You may want to look into Rolf's mono  VB compiler  (written in Mono VB 8) (see http://www.mono-project.com/Visual_Basic).

Jim Wooley

http://devauthority.com/blogs/jwooley

http://www.LinqInAction.net

Answer 5

As for Mono - I very much doubt MS would add the option to target a open source framework with there tool out of the box.

Multitargetting allows for .framework 2.0 and above to be targeted.   No plans to support  older version framework targetting.

The big difference is the referenced assemblies used for the different frameworks - all the various targets use the same 3.5 compiler  but are used with references to the different assemblies for each targetted framework.