A prerelease version of the next edition of Visual Studio, code-named Whidbey, is now available on MSDN. The Visual Studio 2005 "Whidbey" Community Technology Preview is the first version of Whidbey that Microsoft has provided to developers since the Oct. 2003 Professional Developers Conference and comes a few weeks after the company announced that Whidbey, along with the next version of SQL Server (code-named Yukon), is delayed and won’t ship until the first half of 2005. (See "SQL Server, Visual Studio Out to 2005" on page 16 of the Apr. 2004 Update.)

The new preview may be particularly important to ASP.NET developers who are anxious to get their hands on the many improvements offered by ASP.NET 2.0 and were unhappy to see it delayed due to the Yukon slip. (See "ASP.NET Gets Major Improvements" on page 12 of the Feb. 2004 Update.) ASP.NET 2.0 is included in the Technology Preview.

Although the new preview offers developers a better look at the eventual feature set of Whidbey, Microsoft emphasizes that the preview is not yet feature-complete, nor is it up to alpha or beta quality. Customers should install the preview only on a dedicated machine. In addition, the preview is available only as a full DVD image and is approximately 2.6GB. No CD images are available.

The Visual Studio 2005 Community Technology Preview is at the MSDN Subscription Download site at msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/downloads/default.aspx.

Details on some of the improvements in Whidbey can be found in "Visual Studio 'Whidbey' Details Emerge" on page 12 of the Oct. 2003 Update.