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Visual Studio 2008 and .NET FX 3.5 were released last November and it’s a little early for a service pack (which has been in beta since May), but Microsoft apparently had some things to fix beyond the usual:
Microsoft’s "milestone" first-service pack for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 has been released as the company shows concern over growing code bloat.
SP1 certainly offers a radical diet for .NET’s weight problem: it introduces the .NET Framework Client Profile for client-side applications. The Profile cuts by 85 per cent the amount of code you’ll need to run a Windows Vista-looking application on a machine that can only stretch to Windows XP. It’s designed to improve download and start-up times.
SP 1 comes less than a year after the launch of Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5. It has been released, though, as further evidence has emerged that Microsoft is concerned over the number of .NET Framework libraries, as product groups converge on a single framework.
SD Times claims to have seen a Microsoft memo that pointed to the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and ADO.NET entity framework as particular causes for concern. Tellingly, the .NET Framework Client Profile includes the WPF and WCF.
The report follows our own recent conversation with the general manager for Microsoft’s presentation platforms and tools team Ian Ellison-Taylor, who said on the client: ".NET got a little big - it was a victim of its own success"
However, the idea of using deployment specific profiles to lessen the extraneous baggage comes with the risk of additional complexity for developers.
There’s also a hidden problem for those building .NET applications. Already, a lot of people are angry at the fact they have to download different version numbers of the .NET Framework on their machines to build and test applications. Imagine how messy it could get in a world of multiple profiles, all of them running different version numbers.
So far there is only the .NET Framework Client Profile, of course, but human nature abhors a singleton. More details on the conventional enhancements and a download link are available in the MSDN overview.
Bill Gates made a valedictory appearance at this year’s TechEd and along with a Steve Ballmer robot had some some development related announcements:
Not on the formal program was a certain amount of uncertainty over the arrival of SQL Server 2008:
He said Microsoft’s SharePoint Server would become the first Microsoft product to use enterprise search from its Fast Search and Transfer acquisition. The delayed SQL Server will be next. "Think of it as SQL Server, but it’s really Fast," he said.
For all the talk of data services, there was still no date on the next edition of SQL Server. Demonstrating SQL Server 2008, Dave Campbell, from Microsoft’s data storage platform division said SQL Server 2008 would be available in the "next month or two."
SQL Server 2008 is due in 3Q so it is not really past its latest due date. Fast Search & Transfer was acquired by Microsoft in January.
Microsoft has released betas of the first service packs for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5:
Earlier today we shipped a public beta of our upcoming .NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 releases. These servicing updates provide a roll-up of bug fixes and performance improvements for issues reported since we released the products last November. They also contain a number of feature additions and enhancements that make building .NET applications better (see below for details on some of them).
We plan to ship the final release of both .NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 this summer as free updates. You can download and install the beta here.
At the first link there’s quite a list of enhancements including SQL Server 2008 support, ADO.NET Data Services (formerly code-named "Astoria"), and the ADO.NET Entity Framework and ASP.NET 3.5 extensions previewed in December.
Overshadowed by the Microsoft Yahoo takeover soap opera last week, Microsoft released version 2 of its Expression Studio collection of Web tools:
Expression Encoder is new in version 2 of the Studio and among other new features, Silverlight support was added to all of the tools, and PHP and ASP.NET 3.5 support was added to Expression Web. The PHP support reflects broader aspirations than just covering the needs of captive Microsoft technology developers but it will be difficult to break the grip that Adobe Dreamweaver has on that market.
Less desirable is the perpetuation of the wacky dichotomy between Microsoft developer tools (Visual Studio) and design tools (Expression). Developers who subscribe to the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) have been promised only a subset of the Expression tools and they will have to either ante up for a standalone copy or buy an Express Professional Subscription (which partially overlaps the MSDN subscription) to get the full set.
Microsoft this week released their "spring Zune update" which is version 2.5 if you are keeping track:
Microsoft Corp. today announced that Zune, the company’s all-in-one digital entertainment brand, is adding new software features and content to the Zune online store, music community and Zune Pass monthly subscription service. Zune is expanding its video store to include downloads of popular television shows from COMEDY CENTRAL, FUNimation Entertainment, MTV, NBC Universal, Nickelodeon, Starz Media (including Manga Entertainment), Turner Broadcasting, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and VH1 that consumers can sync to their device and enjoy on the go.
I’m hardly a fan of watching TV in the first place and watching on a tiny screen (whether on the Zune or iPod) seems excessively excruciating, but Microsoft did manage to grab NBC away from iTunes.
In addition, by further integrating the Zune music community into the core experience, the new software makes it easier for people to find and listen to the music they want, share it with friends, and take it with them wherever they go — whether they choose a Zune Pass or a la carte MP3 downloads. Zune Pass subscribers can now set up automatic, real-time feeds of the music their friends are listening to and add those songs to their collection or Zune device.
Following the above link provides a laundry list of new social networking features added to the Zune Social which is what Microsoft occasionally calls their online Zune community, but it takes a critical mass to tango in the social networking world and the Zune is still very much a niche:
And to use the social features, your friends need to have Zunes, too — which ours don’t.
And yours probably don’t, either. WSJ: "According to market-research firm NPD Group Inc., Apple had 71% of the U.S. portable-music-player market in the first quarter, compared with 4% for Microsoft."
It’s social networking where the price of entry is a proprietary hardware gadget. Microsoft isn’t the first vendor to chase that chimera.
Also of note: Microsoft is now sufficiently comfortable with the Zune program to expand beyond the USA - Zune is coming to Canada on June 13.
Update: Microsoft today announced the release of a XNA Game Studio 3.0 Community Technical Preview for building games for "the entire family of Zune media devices." Some notable features of v3.0 include using non DRM background music and "the ability to have multiple nearby Zunes wirelessly engage in an ad-hoc social gaming experience."
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