Updated: July 9, 2020 (February 26, 2007)

Developer Tools Overview

As managing vice president, Rob Helm covers Microsoft collaboration services and client software. His 25-plus years of experience analyzing Microsoft’s... more

The next major tools release is Visual Studio “Orcas,” which will support programming on Windows Vista and the .NET Framework 3.0 (which is also available for Windows XP SP2). Orcas will probably not ship until late 2007. Until then, developers will be able to write applications for Windows Vista and the .NET Framework 3.0 with Visual Studio 2005, but will lack some valuable tools, such as a visual designer for the Windows Presentation Framework (the .NET Framework 3.0 graphics and UI system).

Microsoft has released Visual Studio 2005 add-ins to aid development for the new Office 2007 UI technology and AJAX-style ASP.NET applications. Also just released is Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals, an edition of the Visual Studio IDE that enables developers to manage database development with Team System. Expression Web, the first release in the new Expression product line for professional designers, supports Web site design with standard technologies such as HTML and CSS.

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