Developer Tools Overview

Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4 shipped in Apr. 2010. They include a major update to team development features, with enhancements for testing and application modeling. The next major version of Visual Studio that will come after Visual Studio 2010 is currently referred to by Microsoft as Visual Studio 11 and became available as a beta in Feb. 2012. The new version will probably become generally available near the release of Windows 8, which is likely to be late 2012.

The Visual Studio 11 beta can be used with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview to start implementation of Metro-style applications with templates and tools for the C, C++, C#, Visual Basic, and JavaScript programming languages. Other enhancements focus on improving application life-cycle management by helping development teams, IT operations personnel, and application users work together better to design, develop, and manage software. New user interfaces within Visual Studio, supported by Team Foundation Server 11 (which is also available as a beta), simplify routine tasks for developers.