Snowball - The Blog

Probably the most anticipated beta release ever for developers from Microsoft has been release: Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 is here, along with the .NET framework V4. After a beta-1 release earlier this year, this latest release shows how the final product will work and, certainly as important, what will it look like.

Visual Studio 2010 has a completely overhauled UI, built entirely with WPF. This opens up many possibilities, including multi-monitor support and a skinnable interface.

Availability

At this point, MSDN subscribers have access to the bits. General availability is due on Wednesday October 21st. Expect a slowdown of the internet when every .NET developer will start pulling down this release!

Along with the release of this beta version, Microsoft also announced the launch date for the final version. Mark March 22nd 2010 in your calendars. Both Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 will enter RTM on that day.

Hello Visual Studio 2010

Visual Studio 2010 marks another step in productivity, code quality, simplicity and creativity. The IDE features more languages and tools than previous versions, including support for the new F# language, Entity Framework 4 and of course new versions of C# and VB.NET.

Code quality will be improved due to new features such as IntelliTrace and Historical Debugging available in the new version. Enhancements to the IDE such as Generate from Usage mean that whether modeling, coding, testing or debugging, developers can use existing skills to deploy a growing number of application types. And new designers for Silverlight and WPF integrated in Visual Studio 2010 allow developers to bring their creative parts to life!

The new kids … erhm packages on the block

Along with the release of Visual Studio 2010/.NET Framework 4, Microsoft also announced the new SKU line-up, which holds benefits for every developer. This decision was made primarily to make the purchasing decisions for customers easier. The principle that Microsoft used here is that every existing customer will get benefits from their current subscription. These are the new SKUs that you’ll be seeing in the future:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate: Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate is the comprehensive suite of application lifecycle management tools for teams to ensure quality results from design to deployment.
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Premium: Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Premium is a complete toolset for developers to deliver scalable, high quality applications.
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional: Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional is the essential tool for basic development tasks to allow developers to implement their ideas easily.

As you can see, Ultimate is the … well yeah, ultimate version. Let’s take a look at what is included in this package:

• New Architecture tools (including new UML assets) that transfer your architecture from whiteboard to living assets
• New tools that enable testing teams to capture rich and actionable bugs at different points in time
• New testing tools that bring business users, test generalists and others into the process
• A world class Integrated Development Environment that enables the development across multiple platforms, including the cloud
• With the highest level of MSDN subscription, all of Microsoft’s server and client applications for development & test usage

Existing customer will be able to benefit from special offers to upgrade. Microsoft will offer more details on this after March 22nd.

MSDN is new as well

Finally, Microsoft announced today a revamped MSDN site (visit it through http://msdn.microsoft.com/ ). Not only a new look, but much more has changed. Microsoft has made MSDN a more community driven resource and more eLearning solutions are available. Developers will also be able to benefit from Azure compute hours. Take a look, it will be worth the visit!