I am impressed with how fast Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 loads up, within milliseconds in fact. Very impressive. A huge improvement than the 10-15 seconds loading time in Visual Studio 2005. Applauds and thumbs up to the Visual Studio IDE team. You have heard my plea for a faster loading time.
As the title goes, it is on MSDN ready for downloading. Here are the links.
Get an early look at Visual Studio 2008
The next version of Visual Studio, Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008, will provide an industry-leading developer experience for Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, and the Web. In addition, it will continue in the Microsoft tradition of development language innovation. To enable early feedback, this page provides links to prerelease versions of Visual Studio 2008, and for technologies that we plan to include in it. As previews of additional technologies become available, we will make them available from this page.We encourage you to download and try these early releases. Before installing a release, review the prerequisites as some releases may require additional software prior to installation. As with all prerelease software, we encourage you only to install these on a secondary machine, or in a virtual machine, as they are not supported by Microsoft Services support teams. As the goal of these previews is to gather feedback from the developer community, please use Microsoft Connect to report any issues, or to suggest improvements.
Installation Disc Images
If you prefer to install the software yourself, you can download separate disc images for the following products:
- Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition Beta 2
- Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition Beta 2
- Visual Studio Team System 2008 – Team Suite Beta 2
- Visual Studio Team System 2008 – Team Foundation Server Beta 2
- Visual Studio Team System 2008 – Test Load Agent Beta 2
- MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2
IMPORTANT:
- After the Beta 2 installation has finished, you should run this script to ensure that the installation of .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2 will not affect the development of ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 applications.
- To install Team Foundation Server, you must follow the steps and system requirements details on the download page.
- When installing prerelease software, we advise that you do not install it on a production machine.
VPC Images
If you prefer the convenience of evaluating prerelease software in a virtual machine environment, you can download VPC images for the following products that include pre-installed instances of the prerelease software indicated, including any required prerequisite software. You will need Virtual PC or Virtual Server to run this image. Depending on your hardware, the download files make take between 30-60 minutes to decompress these self-extracting files.
- Visual Studio Team System 2008 – Team Suite Beta 2 VPC
- Visual Studio Team System 2008 – Team Suite & Team Foundation Server Beta 2 VPC
IMPORTANT:
- After extracting and opening the VPC, you should run this script to ensure that the installation of .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2 will not affect the development of ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 applications.
Visual Studio Express Editions
Visual Studio Express Editions are lightweight, easy-to-use and easy-to-learn tools for the hobbyist, novice and student developer.
Enjoy. 
We are pleased to announce the release of Visual Studio
Team Foundation Server – Project Server 2007 Connector which is available at http://www.codeplex.com/pstfsconnector.
OVERVIEW
The Visual Studio Team Foundation Server – Project
Server 2007 Connector is designed to integrate the project management
capabilities of TFS with Project Server 2007. It’s been developed by the
Visual Studio Team System Rangers in response to significant customer demand
for a connector solution. Future versions of Team System will have native
integration with Project Server, in the meantime this Connector solution is
the best way to integrate the two Microsoft products. This solution builds on
the previous PS2003 VSTS Connector, published on GotDotNet. This solution is
intended to provide guidance, provided as source code that can be used
“as is,” extended, or modified.
BACKGROUND
Microsoft® Office Project Server 2007 and Microsoft
Visual Studio® 2005 Team Foundation Server (TFS) are two powerful
applications that are each used in different ways for management of software
development projects. Up-to-date project information requires a seamless
integration between the development environment and the project management
tool.
Managing projects, resources, and related information
for an entire enterprise requires a holistic view and integration of project
management data with the software development lifecycle. The Enterprise
Project Management (EPM) solution with Microsoft Office Project Server 2007
can help organizations effectively manage and coordinate people, projects,
and processes. The Microsoft EPM solution provides tools for strong
coordination and standardization between projects and project managers,
centralized resource management, and high-level reporting on projects and
resources. Through familiar tools and ease of integration with a broad range
of programs in the Microsoft Office System, the EPM solution promotes broad
participation for greater accuracy, accountability, and acceptance.
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (TFS) provides a solution
for software development teams that integrates designing, developing,
testing, and managing a project. TFS integrates with Microsoft Office Project
Standard 2007 and Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007 for desktop use
and allows project managers to plan and manage projects on a local computer.
However, because there is no integration with Project Server, the project
data for each team is available only in a stand-alone plan. There is no
simple way to aggregate project data across multiple projects.
The Connector synchronizes Project, Resource and Task
data between the two systems. Project Managers and Resource Managers continue
to work in the EPM environment while the development team works in the
development environment, i.e. TFS, and data seamlessly flows between the two
systems. Updates to work items in TFS are automatically applied to the
corresponding assignments and tasks in Project Server and vice versa. Project
Managers have complete control over the inflow of the actuals into the project
plan. In addition, resource management functions for all development
projects, like managing time and utilization for resources working across
multiple projects, team staffing etc. can be performed in Project Server.
Lastly, portfolio and program level reports can easily be generated for
projects being executed in TFS and managed in Project Server.
Project Link: http://www.codeplex.com/tfspsconnector
http://www.codeplex.com/pstfsconnector/Wiki/View.aspx?title=Setup%20Guide&referringTitle=Home
Questions or Feedback? tfpstalk@microsoft.com or http://www.codeplex.com/pstfsconnector/Thread/List.aspx
This will be the first time I’ll be doing this, and many more to come with subsequent updates. I’ll be sifting out all the new downloads and listing down those that will be of interest to me, and hopefully yourself too.
Alright. Now the featured download for this week is…
Microsoft Code Name “Acropolis” CTP 1
I’ll be looking into this new Client Application Framework (CAF) during the next few days to give you the low-down on what exactly it is. From the description, it seems to be a set of components and tools to help developers create windows client applications. Here are some resources with more information on “Acropolis”.
Apparently, they just announced this at TechEd 2007.
From a few discussions I’ve read so far about “Acropolis”, it is meant to replace Microsoft Composite UI Application Block (CAB) and Smart Client Software Factory (SCSF), taking the lessons learnt and good stuff with both of them to combine what we know as “Acropolis”.
Well, more about “Acropolis” CAF in a few days time.
It seems the battle of the Virtualization space is getting hotter and hotter by the minute. Parallels 3.0 has just been released with 3D GPU emulation built-in. This means that you can play your PC games right on your Mac OS with Parallels.
Not far behind from cool features is VMWare Fusion which is still in beta. VMWare Fusion allows your Windows applications to somewhat “snap out of Windows” and run like a native application in your Mac OS. This feature is called Unity. Here’s what VMWare Fusion has to say about Unity.
New “Unity” feature: Say goodbye to the Windows desktop – VMware Fusion now lets you run Windows XP applications directly on your Mac desktop, providing full integration with Mac keyboard shortcuts and the Exposé feature in Mac OS X. Use the VMware Fusion Launch Palette to easily access all your Windows applications, and save your favorite Windows applications to the Mac OS X Dock.
What can I say? This is just simply too cool to be true. Here is a video of fusion located here.
Now how cool is that? Makes me want to buy a MacBook right now and use Visual Studio “natively” on Mac OS.
A .NET Library to dynamically call Web services at runtime.
Have you ever thought of invoking your Web services dynamically without having to generate a client-side proxy class at design/compile time with WSCF, wsdl.exe or Visual Studio .NET? No need to know the exact Web service description and endpoint at compile/design time. Just get your WSDL, specify the service (binding) to use and the operations to call, and voila! The library can be used especially good in testing scenarios.
Just noticed this other good stuff for web services, posted by Softwaremaker. It’s from the same guy as the previous post I made, WS-ContractFirst (WSCF).
Do check it out.
Oh and just to add, the web services guru in Singapore, Softwaremaker aka William Tay’s blog. http://www.softwaremaker.net/blog
Download it here.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=c41d8159-b42f-4d06-a797-e510494976ee&displaylang=en
Here is a list of the changes and hotfixes included in the SP.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;837234
Release Notes are here.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C64786BC-FC5D-46C8-9E2E-FCD3A79935D8&displaylang=en
This download installs Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2002. Fixes in this Service Pack concern stability and security enhancements made in many areas of the product. A comprehensive list of hotfixes requested by customers since the release of Visual Studio .NET 2002 and included in this Service Pack can be found by following the appropriate link under Related Resources on this page.
Enjoy!
Yesterday we had a practical session yesterday trying to set up SCCBridge to access VSS. It actually was quite simple to set up actually.
Just a short description of SCCBridge. SCCBridge is a bridge between your VSS and supposedly your lan/internet. It uses WSE 2.0 and SOAP to achieve this. It’s split into 2 parts. The server and the client. The server is a webservice that interfaces with your VSS. It’s simple to set up. Just edit the web.config and change your VSS directory settings, and expose it to your IIS and the outside world.
The client is basically an SCC that installs into your Visual Studio. You’ll need to install WSE 2.0 first. The functionalities are all the same.
Anyway, the problem we faced was quite simple. We had to set up the VSS directory permissions. Added the Network Service account and give it read/write/modify access.
Another problem we faced was when trying to access through the internet, as an external connection. I can’t seem to log in. It might be something wrong with my connection I guess. I’m behind a router.
Anyway, here are the threads that discusses this.
Practical: Visual Source Safe over Internet
Access VSS via the Internet
Some of you guys might be having trouble installing VSTS aka Visual Studio Team Suite (which is the new name for Visual Studio 2005) and come across this problem as described here.
Problems installing VSTS 2005 Dec. 2004 Refresh
Well, the problem I had was a conflict with the .NET Framework 2.0, with SQL Server 2005 Dec 2005 CTP being installed first. And what is the solution for this?
Uninstall your .NET Framework 2.0, install the VSTS (which now installs), then repair SQL Server 2005. This is how you get it working.
I do not know if you’ll have any problems install SQL Server 2005 after installing VSTS 2005. Anyone tried and have problems?