Microsoft Visual Studio 2008

Microsoft released its IDE Visual Studio on November19,2007 with several new and exiting features. This IDE generally uses .Net framework 3.5 but can also be used with other framework versions like 2.0 and 3.0 . Thus it provides Multi-Targetting Support for developers. This feature is not extended to older frameworks like 1.0 and 1.1 due to significant design changes in Common Language Runtime(CLR) engine between 1.X and 2.x that makes debugging difficult very difficult to support. But with VS2008 installed on your computer, it runs side by side with VS 2002 and VS 2003.

VS 2008 comes with following additional added feature :

1. Java Script Intellisense.
2. Much richer Java Script debugging.
3. Rich CSS editing and layout support within the designer.
4. Split view designer support for having both design and source view open on a page at a same time.
5. Automated sql script generation and hosting deployment support for databases on remote servers.
6. Nested asp.net master pages support at design time.

Along with these several new features that come along with vb and c# languages are Extension methods, Lambada expressions,Language Integrated Query(LINQ) which provides rich query support against any collections or array or xml stream or database and also extensive support to Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel applications.

I got copy of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition and you could also download here. You can also use Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Beta version which is available here.

I will surely come up with some samples to illustrate all these features of VS2008 soon.