Visual Studio 11 Express Comes to All Microsoft Platforms

admin    IT News, Microsoft, Programming, Visual Studio    

Microsoft is gearing up for the release of a new version of its Visual Studio tool, one that will include enhancements to make it fit for the development of applications for all Windows platforms.

The upcoming Visual Studio 11 will also include a new version of Visual Studio Express, which arrives with support for Windows 8, Windows Phone, Windows Azure and for the Web, Microsoft announced.

The tool will offer developers the possibility to easily come up with applications for each of the platforms, courtesy of its included support for multiple languages, specific to them.

“For example, the Express edition for Windows 8 allows developers to use C#, Visual Basic, C++ and JavaScript. It also provides best-in-class tools for creating Metro style apps for Windows 8, including tools such as Blend, app profiling, unit testing and more,” Microsoft explains.

One of the important inclusions in this release is Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone, which will be delivered as soon as the next version of the mobile platform arrives.

Additionally, there will be Windows Azure tooling available when the platform receives the next update. In the meantime, Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone and Windows Azure SDK for .NET should provide devs with the necessary tools to create applications for these OSes.

“Finally, LightSwitch, which launched last year as an out-of-band release, is now officially part of the Visual Studio 11 core product family. LightSwitch features will be available through Visual Studio 11 Professional, Premium, and Ultimate editions,” Microsoft announced.

Visual Studio 11 arrives with important performance enhancements, yet the tool will come with the same hardware requirements as Visual Studio 2010 did before it. Developers will be able to move to it without having to purchase hardware upgrades for their computers.

“Visual Studio 11 leverages core capabilities that are only present in the latest versions of Windows. For this reason Visual Studio 11 requires Windows 7 or higher to run,” Microsoft states.

Apps built using Visual Studio 11 will target .NET Framework 4.5 and the VC11 toolset, which means that they will work on Windows Vista and higher. Developers will be able to build for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 as well, via multi-targeting.

Managed developers can design applications to target .NET Framework 4 or the .NET Framework 4 Client Profile, which will make them compatible with the aforementioned platforms.

“Note that when you update your app to target .NET Framework 4, you can continue using the new Async features by installing the Async Targeting Pack for Visual Studio 11,” Microsoft explains.

C++ developers are also able to take advantage of multi-targeting in Visual Studio 11 to continue using the compilers and libraries that came with Visual Studio 2010 to deliver applications for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

However, they should keep in mind that multi-targeting for C++ applications requires a side-by-side installation of Visual Studio 2010 at the moment.

“Separately, we are evaluating options for C++ that would enable developers to directly target XP without requiring a side-by-side installation of Visual Studio 2010 and intend to deliver this update post-RTM,” Microsoft concluded.

Visual Studio 11 Beta is currently available for MSDN subscribers. You can download Visual Studio 10 from Softpedia via this link.

[softpedia]

Microsoft Releases Beta of Python Tools for Visual Studio

admin    IT News, Microsoft, Programming, Visual Studio    

Python Tools for Visual Studio features:

• Advanced editing, Intellisense, browsing, “Find all refs”, REPL, …
• Supports CPython and IronPython
• Local & Cluster/remote debugging
• Profiling with multiple views
• Interactive parallel computing via integrated IPython REPL
• Support for HPC clusters and MPI, including debugging support
• NumPy & SciPy for .Net
• Support for Cloud Computing (soon)
• Support for Dryad (large scale, data-intensive parallel programming) (soon)
• Free & Open Source (Apache 2.0)

[RRW]

Announcing Visual Studio Summer of Extensions Competition

admin    IT News, Visual Studio    

We’re pleased to announce that in collaboration with Microsoft, ReadWriteWeb will be hosting a competition for Visual Studio developers to see who can create the most compelling Visual Studio 2010 extensions.

Extensions are an add-on to Visual Studio 2010 that improves the user experience. Your extension could provide additional functionality to the product, or add a level of customization to better serve an individual or company’s needs.

We have a number of resources to help you learn more about Visual Studio and extension development, including the following videos:

• VSX101: An Introduction to Visual Studio 2010 Extensibility
• VSX102: Deploying Visual Studio 2010 Extensions
• VSX103: Lighting up the new Visual Studio 2010 Editor with Rich Extensions

You also can download a trial version of Visual Studio and learn more about extensions on theMicrosoft Visual Studio site.

We’ll be featuring some of the most compelling extensions here at ReadWriteWeb – plus you could win prizes like a one-year MSDN Embedded subscription license (a $1,199 USD value!), an Xbox Elite bundle, or a Natural Wireless Ergonomic Desktop 700 keyboard and mouse.

Beyond submitting extensions, we also are looking for our development community to check out and comment on their peers’ submissions. You can keep track of the submissions and submit your entry by visiting the Summer of Extensions page.

<readwriteweb>

Announcing availability of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4

admin    IT News, Programming, Visual Studio    

I am very excited to announce the availability of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 on April 12^th.

This represents the biggest tools release from Microsoft in many years.

To celebrate this with our customers and partners, we are holding 5 major launch events on April 12^th in Beijing, China; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Bangalore, India; London, UK; Las Vegas, USA; and in over 150 local events around the world.

The new release of Visual Studio 2010 has plenty of compelling new features and updates that will make every developer more productive.

• Visual Studio 2010 allows users target of the right platform for their application, including Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008, SharePoint. Office, Windows Azure, and Windows Phone 7 applications using their existing skills.

• Visual Studio 2010 is a rich, personalized development environment.  We know that software developers spend much of their time in the IDE, and features like the new editor and multi-monitor support make your time in Visual Studio more productive and enjoyable.

• Teams are able to work more efficiently using Application Lifecycle Management tools.  We’ve done a great deal of work in Visual Studio 2010 to improve testing and debugging tools.  Features like IntelliTrace and easy project management help your team ensure high quality.

I always say that our partners play a key role in the success of our platforms and tools.  With Visual Studio, it is no different.  Between the tools that we deliver in Visual Studio and what our partners build on top of Visual Studio, we have a very comprehensive tools offering for our customers.  I do want to take this opportunity to thank the approximately 50 partners who announced availability of products and solutions built on this latest wave of technologies. I am also very appreciative and thankful of the customers, MVPs, and others who provided us valuable feedback and made Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 such an amazing release.

I am also thrilled to say that Silverlight 4 will be released to the Web later this week. When Silverlight 4 is released, you will be able to download an update for Visual Studio 2010 to support Silverlight 4 development.

I hope you will join us at one of our events, or watch the keynote live.

I look forward to your participation as we strive to reach a million developers on April 12 through our world-wide launch events. To purchase Visual Studio 2010 now, visit here.  If you are an MSDN subscriber, later in the day on April 12th you can download Visual Studio 2010 from MSDN.