The Wait for Visual Studio 2008 is Over!
On Monday, Nov. 19, Microsoft announced that Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 were released to manufacturing (RTM). With more than 250 new features,Visual Studio 2008 includes significant enhancements in every edition, including Visual Studio Express and Visual Studio Team System. Developers of all levels – from hobbyists to enterprise development teams – now have a consistent, secure and reliable solution for developing applications for the latest platforms: the Web, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, the 2007 Office system, and beyond.
You can read the whitepaper from from here
As usual, express editions for developers are free at http://www.microsoft.com/express/
Some of the noted features of new Visual Studio 2008 are:
- Enhanced IDE (Settings migration, community features, window management, class designer)
- Projects and Solutions (Web applicaiton, AJAX development, Project designer, deployment)
- Editing (New design view and CSS Design Tools, IntelliSense for JavaScript and ASP.NET AJAX, WPF Designer)
- Data
- LINQ
- Client Application Services
- Reporting (Report Wizard, Expression Editor, Report Viewer, PDF Compression)
- MSBuild (Target a specific .NET framework, Multi processor capability, Enhanced logging, Item definition, Assembly locaiton and name changing)
- etc.