Articles about Visual Studio

Developers, developers, developers! No Microsoft did not forget you today during the kickoff of Build. Windows 8.1 may have been the headline, but those behind the real development were not left out from the proceedings. Microsoft today rolls out the 2013 edition of Visual Studio in Preview mode.

The IDE software is used by developers on a daily basis to create console and graphical user interface applications. The software debuted back in 1997 and has progressed ever since.

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While many of us upgrade software by simply clicking a link -- frequently found in the Help menu -- many Visual Studio users would prefer other options. In fact, Demand is high for an ISO version of the latest update to the integrated developer environment, which recently moved the 2012 product to update 2.

Microsoft points out that many customers install Visual Studio Updates from the 'toast' pop-up notification or from the Extensions and Updates dialog. In tracking the release feedback, Microsoft also observed a set of users requesting an ISO image as an alternative way to download the update. The primary reasons seen for such requests, the company claims, is familiarity both with the format and with various download management tools.

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As expected, the Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012 RTM builds were made available for download to Microsoft MSDN and TechNet subscribers Wednesday afternoon, giving developers early access to the "first final" build of Microsoft's flagship operating system and development environment.

This round of releases focuses on getting developers the tools they need to get Windows 8 apps ready for sale when the OS goes commercially available on October 26. As such, the new Windows Store is a major focus of updates today.

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Microsoft's suite of enterprise products isn't about to let the consumer-facing ones steal the headlines. On the same day the Redmond, Wash. company announced the Release Preview of Windows 8, the company's enterprise and developer software arm announced the release candidates of .NET Framework 4.5, Visual Studio 2012 and Windows Server 2012.

Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5 are available for download by anyone by visiting the Visual Studio 2012 website, while Windows Server 2012 is available only to TechNet and MSDN subscribers by visiting TechNet.

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Microsoft has released betas of its various Visual Studio 11 editions -- Ultimate, Premium, Professional, Test Professional and Express -- along with Team Foundation Server and the .NET Framework 4.5.

And of course it’s no coincidence that the latest version of the IDE has arrived on the same day as the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Visual Studio is all about developing for Windows 8, and its integrated tools for publishing directly to the new Windows App Store will make it much easier for developers to reach a potentially huge market.

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Microsoft on Thursday announced three major betas will be rolling out on February 29: The first beta of Visual Studio 11, the beta of the .NET framework 4.5, and the beta of Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Server.

Microsoft is expected to roll out the consumer preview of Windows 8 at the same time, and today the Corporate VP of Microsoft's developer division, Soma Somasegar said many of the milestones of Visual Studio are synched with the milestone releases of Windows 8, so as we progress through beta stages, all the products will mature simultaneously.

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Microsoft on Friday announced the publication of the C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism (AMP) specification under the Microsoft Community Promise license. This specification lets C++ developers write programs that can compile and execute on data-parallel hardware like discrete graphics cards or the SIMD vector instruction set in a processor. It can also be thought of as hardware acceleration.

Soma Somasegar, the Vice President of Microsoft's Developer Division, revealed last summer that the company was working on support for parallelism in the next version of Visual Studio.

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Today, Microsoft dropped the other ball during the second big BUILD developer conference keynote. The company is releasing Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview and Windows Server 8 Developer Preview. The software will be available for MSDN subscribers.

Yesterday, Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows & Windows Live division, formally unveiled Windows 8, which is available in a developer preview you can download now. Today, Jason Zander, vice president for the Visual Studio team, connected the dots to developing apps supporting Azure services also connected to Windows Phone 7.5. He created the Windows 8 Metro-style game pictured above.

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A delay of what Microsoft Developer SVP S. Somasegar calls "back a few weeks," in the final release of Visual Studio 2010 and its accompanying .NET Framework 4, is the apparent result of performance issues that beta testers would not let rest.

Somasegar's post yesterday afternoon started out by saying, certainly you've noticed how VS 2010 Beta 2 is faster than Beta 1: "As you may have seen, we significantly improved performance between Beta 1 and Beta 2." But then he transitions smoothly into an admission of just the opposite: "Based on what we've heard, we clearly needed to do more work. Over the last couple of months, our engineering team has been doing a push to improve performance. We have made significant progress in this space since Beta 2."

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All next week, Betanews will be reporting from Los Angeles, at the scene of this year's Microsoft Professional Developers' Conference. Based on our experience with prior years' shows, here's the pattern we expect: Day 1 (officially next Tuesday) will center on self-congratulation for Windows 7, much of it deserved. Day 2 will likely bring out the bugle corps for the public introduction of Office 2010 Beta 1 -- not the Technical Preview that's currently being circulated, but a more feature-complete rendition that should have more Web- and cloud-related connectivity.

But our coverage will begin on Monday with an unusual twist to "Day 0," which is usually reserved for in-depth workshops that command extra attendance fees. This year, Microsoft is trying an unusual step by opening up its day-long "Windows 7 Developer Boot Camp," headlined by Technical Fellow and SysInternals engineer Mark Russinovich, not only to all PDC attendees but to the general public. Here, we'll see how much attention Windows 7 can get not just from developers, but from passers-by on the street corner.

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Sign up for Sybase PowerBuilder 12 Beta 1 through Fileforum now.

In the early 1990s, before the introduction of the Web application upended the entire programming model, and businesses' local networks had yet to be connected to the Internet, a very serious battle took place in the emerging market of high-level client/server development systems. Microsoft helped legitimize that market with the introduction of Visual Basic, originally pushed toward businesses as a rapid business app development tool; and Borland helped blow the market wide open by devoting its Turbo Pascal expertise in a product called Delphi. But the seed product for this market had taken root the previous decade: a high-level interpreter with object-oriented foundation from Powersoft, called PowerBuilder.

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Microsoft today issued security updates for the Active Template Library (ATL) which address a vulnerability that could allow remote code execution.

Libraries are collections of codes upon which software is built, and Microsoft's ATL is used by developers to create controls or components (such as Automation and ActiveX) in Windows. But any components or controls created with the vulnerable version of ATL may now become vulnerable due to how ATL is used or due to issues in the ATL code itself.

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A Microsoft spokesperson has confirmed to Betanews that today, May 18, will be the release date for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 as well as .NET Framework 4.0 Beta 1, for MSDN subscribers. The general public will get their first shot at both new technologies on Wednesday.

Though last September's preview edition showed the addition of new tools for application architecture modeling -- moving deep into IBM territory there -- as well as for development team management, it was all being shown under the auspices of the old VS 2008 front end. Soon after the preview edition was released, the company revealed that it was scrapping that more traditional front end in favor of a design based on the Windows Presentation Foundation platform.

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With the next edition of Microsoft's development tools suite, every commercial edition will feature some type of architectural tool that competes directly with a slew of UML-based add-ons, including a major revenue center for IBM.

Though Visual Studio 2008 was only formally introduced last January, the betas of Microsoft's development environment were often found in full production use as early as late 2006. Now with Windows 7 looking to be a reality for around this time next year, Microsoft finds itself accelerating the pace of its rollouts and tightening the beta schedule.

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Download .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 from FileForum now.
This is the redistributable package for Windows users to be able to run .NET programs.

This afternoon, Microsoft unveiled a slate of new enhanced releases, including an updated .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 that had been in beta only since February, and the first service pack for Visual Studio 2008 only six months after its premiere.

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