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Microsoft Developer Division corporate VP S. Soma Somasegar breaks the Orcas news:
Today we signed off on the Beta 1 release for Visual Studio “Orcas” and .NET FX 3.5.
I am very proud of what my team has accomplished and want to take this opportunity to thank them for the great work they have done – in terms of innovation, new scenarios that we are enabling through a set of rich features and a high focus on quality through the project. Between support for the latest platforms including Windows Vista, Office 2007, Longhorn Server and the Web, significant improvements in developer productivity and taking the next step forward in our Application Lifecycle Tools journey with VSTS and TFS, I know we have got an awesome product in the making.
The VS Pro and VSTS products are at Beta1. As part of this we are also putting out CTPs (Community Technology Previews) of the Express SKUs as this is the first time that we are making Express products for “Orcas” available to our customers.
Folks with a hankering for testing can find information on how to get the beta/CTP Orcas bits here and they are conveniently offering virtual PC images. There’s also a new whitepaper providing an Orcas feature overview while Computerworld NZ has a a useful interview with Prashant Sridharan, Microsoft’s product manager for Visual Studio, covering the product roadmap. No specific date for Orcas had been announced, but it seems to be on the cusp of year end 2007.
Last December when Visual Studio Service Pack 1 (SP1) was released the only Vista support was via a beta version which was merely usable with known incompatibilities. Today, that lack was remedied when Microsoft released the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Update for Windows Vista. Microsoft Developer Division corporate VP S. Soma Somasegar explains what’s new in a Q&A:
With this update to Visual Studio, our goal was to ensure developers have the best possible experience on Windows Vista, and that the features developers are using in Visual Studio work as expected. We fixed a number of significant issues around debugging and profiling, and around creating ASP.NET applications for IIS on the developer machine. We also wanted to improve the feedback that Visual Studio gives to developers when an error occurs on Windows Vista.
Microsoft Corporate VP S. “Soma” Somasegar has the news at his weblog:
Today, I’m pleased to announce the availability of the beta of Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1.
Based on your feedback, Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 addresses issues that were found through a combination of customer reports, MSDN Product Feedback Center and internal testing. I know that this Service Pack is a little late in coming. While I regret that it took longer, we wanted to be as thorough as possible about taking your feedback and decided to take the extra time. You can find a technical description of some of the fixes included in this service pack and download the beta by registering on the Microsoft Connect Site. We’ll have the complete list of fixes posted when the service pack releases. Pending feedback from you on this beta, our plan is to ship the final version in the next 3-4 months.
Also of interest was what was revealed about tool support on Vista. Hit the link for all the details but the net is:
I’d laugh about the last item except that whenever I need to whip up a quick client (as opposed to Web) application, I invariably reach for VB6.
The Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh was delivered yesterday and so was a beta of the Visual Studio tooling for developing applications using Office 2007. Microsoft CVP S. “Soma” Somasegar has the news at his weblog:
As a part of supporting Office development, I’m very pleased to announce the beta release of Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition Beta, or VSTO 2005 SE Beta for short), which empowers developers to build applications targeting the 2007 Office system using their existing Visual Studio development skills.
This Visual Studio add-in will be fully supported and is available free to all users of Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition or Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005. Even if you hadn’t already started using Visual Studio with Office, this release gives you a chance to start. The release of VSTO 2005 SE Beta in synchronization with the 2007 Office system Beta 2 Technical Refresh demonstrates our deep commitment to build tools that will enable developers to harness the benefits of the 2007 Office System platform and create Office-based solutions using the professional development environment of Visual Studio 2005.
It’s called “second edition” because the first edition was for Office 2003. Getting customers and partners to use Office as a development platform continues to be a key Microsoft objective and VSTO brings that development into its mainline tooling. More details by following the links and also here.
