Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 2!!!
Ok, it has been a little while since I blogged last, but it is for good reason, and now’s the time to show you why.
The entire Visual Studio team, including my own, have been working extremely hard to get the Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 release squared away, and I’m very pleased to announce that those bits have been made available as of 9:00 AM PDT today! ( See Soma’s announcement here. )
WooHoo!!!
There have been simply a *ton* of changes to the product since last we chatted, both from a functionality perspective ( we’ve made lots of progress that I can’t wait to tell you about! ) to changes in the Visual Studio SKU structure, to logo and name branding, and pricing changes. MSDN itself has been redesigned!
But first and foremost, if you are an MSDN subscriber, stop what you are doing and go down load Beta2 and the .NET Framework 4 bits from this link. I really think you’re going to like what you see! And Beta2 is a “Go Live” release, which means we are encouraging you to use the product in production, with an implied understanding that if serialization formats or what have you change between now and RTM, we’ll provide a way to move your data and artifacts forward so that you don’t lose any work.
If you aren’t an MSDN subscriber, general availability for the release will happen on October 21st.
To get more information on the new packaging and licensing details, please visit this link. But here’s a taste of the new Visual Studio 2010 logo:
And to top everything else off, the official launch date for Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 is March 22nd, 2010!
SKU Structure Change
A couple words about the changes that you can read more about here. The Architecture Edition, along with many of the features of the Team System 2008 Development box, are now part of the Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate product.
The Visual Studio product line has moved to more of a “Russian Doll” model in regards to how the features are represented in each version of the product. At the top of the stack, including all the features and functionality of Visual Studio 2010 Premium and Visual Studio 2010 Professional, is the capabilities found in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate. Going forward, I’m going to be spending my time with posts describing the Modeling and Visualization technologies in Ultimate, as that is what I know best, as that is what my team does. :)
But quickly, here’s a general view of the capabilities found in the new SKU structure. Please understand that from a feature perspective, Ultimate contains everything you see in this list ( all the Premium + Professional features ), plus the Ultimate specific features.
The features in red are the ones my team is responsible for delivering. Those features are the ones I will continue to blog about in depth in the days and weeks ahead.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate ( includes all features from Premium and Professional SKUs ):
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Premium ( includes all features from the Professional SKU ):
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional:
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So stay tuned, as I’m planning on a number of posts that are designed to drill into the new features available in this beta 2 release of Visual Studio!
Cameron