Microsoft is set to deliver the first beta of the next major version of its flagship tools suite, Visual Studio 2010. Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 will be available to core application developer customers on May 18.Microsoft is set to deliver the first beta of the next major version of its
flagship tools suite, Visual Studio 2010.
According to at least one Microsoft blogger, the company will release Beta
1 of Visual Studio 2010 to its core developer customers on May 18. Jihad
Dannawi, a developer tools solution specialist for Microsoft Australia,
said:
On Monday, May 18th, Visual Studio
2010 Beta 1 (Professional, Suite and Team Foundation Server) will be available
to MSDN [Microsoft Developer Network] Subscribers through MSDN Subscriber
Downloads and to the general public on Wednesday, May 20th through Microsoft
Downloads.
Microsoft is delivering a slew of new features in Visual Studio 2010,
including tools for Windows 7 development; an "enhanced user experience";
SharePoint development inside Visual Studio; enhanced Web development capabilities
such as a JavaScript IntelliSense engine, one-click deployment and support for
Silverlight; cloud development support, with Windows Azure Tools for Visual
Studio; support for IBM DB2, Oracle and
Microsoft's own SQL Server database; support for parallel programming; and
enhanced support for ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) through Visual
Studio Team System 2010.
In a May 12 blog post, Jason
Zander, general manager for Visual Studio in Microsoft's Developer Division,
wrote about Visual Studio 2010 enhancements that affect the user experience and
performance of the product. For instance, in reaction to user feedback,
Microsoft eliminated triangles from the outlining mode of the tool.
Said Zander:
You spoke loudly and clearly that you
didn't like the triangle outline mode. Based on this feedback, the team
actually changed this feature in mid-flight during Beta 1 to reflect your
feedback: no more triangles!!
Regarding performance, Zander made a list of tasks typically part of daily
use of the tool and admitted that performance of Visual Studio 2010 is not yet
ideal. Zander wrote:
For Beta 1 we are making progress on
performance but it is not yet where I want it to be. For example the VB/Windows
Forms application is actually doing pretty well while the VB/ASP.NET application is slower than VS2008 (similar
with C#).
In the same post, Zander said, "We are getting very close to releasing
Beta 1. Stay tuned here for the formal announce[ment] of the release and keep
sending us your feedback!"