Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2010 development environment is a complete overhaul of the popular IDE. It will continue to support all current Microsoft development languages and technologies, but it also features a completely revamped UI that’s based on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). If you have an MSDN or Microsoft TechNet subscription, you can download the files now. The available editions include:
- Visual Studio 2010 Professional
- Visual Studio 2010 Premium
- Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate
- Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server
You can also find a number of “Additional Resources”, including web installer packages and tools for testing and team-based development. More information is available on the Visual Studio 2010 Product Information Site (note that, as of this writing, the site still provides links to the Beta 1 version of VS 2010).
Mary-Jo Foley at ZDNet’s Microsoft Watch provides some more details in Testers to get Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 this week; final by March 2010. It looks like the plan is to open up the beta to all testers later this week. The article also provides some basic details about the various editions, their estimated prices, and how you can get hold of them upon release.
The first official beta version of VS 2010 came out in May, so it has been a refresh is very welcome. I have done some informal testing of the first beta and it seems to be fairly stable overall. That version was clearly nowhere near the polish that the release version should have, but it was certainly usable and provided some exciting new features (I’ll cover the highlights in an upcoming post).
Currently, it looks like the final version will be available in Q1, 2009 (based on reports from ZDNet and other bloggers). Let’s hope that it provides all the improvements and new features we’ve been waiting for!
