October 7, 2006

Orcas CTP available for download

Orcas, Next Visual Studio pre-release version (CTP) is available for download here..

Overview
Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" delivers on Microsoft’s vision of smart client applications by enabling developers to rapidly create connected applications that deliver the highest quality rich user experiences. This new version enables any size organization to rapidly create more secure, manageable, and more reliable applications that take advantage of Windows Vista and the 2007 Office System. By building these new types of applications, organizations will find it easier than ever before to capture and analyze information so that they can make effective business decisions.
This download is the September 2006 Community Technology Preview of Microsoft Visual Studio Code-Named “Orcas”.

Note: This CTP is available only as a Virtual PC image. You will need Virtual PC or Virtual Server to run this image. Depending on your hardware the download files make take between 30-60 minutes to decompress.

This CTP targets early adopters of the Microsoft technology, platform, and tools offerings. It enables developers to experience the upcoming toolset and underlying platform improvements. We designed this release to enable developers try out new technology and product changes, but not to build production systems. This limitation is fully covered in the EULA that accompanies this CTP.


The highlights of this CTP include:
  • Improvements on the widely acclaimed Visual Studio 2005 product set
  • Significant investments in improving product quality
  • LINQ to Objects API
    • LINQ to Objects API supports queries over any .NET collection, such as arrays and Generic Lists. This API is defined in the System.Query namespaces inside System.Core.dll. Click here for more details about LINQ.
  • Partial C# 3.0 Language Support: This CTP implements some of the new language features of C# 3.0
    • Local variable type interface
    • Lambda expressions
    • Object initializers
  • Partial C# 3.0 IDE Support: In addition to the C# 3.0 language features there is partial IDE support
    • Colorization and New Keywords in Completion List
    • Edit and Continue Rude Edit Detection
  • Partial VB 9.0 Language support (Due to differences in feature delivery schedules VB implementations of the above C# features will appear in a future CTP)
    • Local variable type inference and Option Infer switch
  • VSTS Improvements in load & unit testing such as unit test for devices
  • Device development improvements
    • VSTS integration
    • Access and modify device security configuration from the IDE
  • Enables developers to build and debug a Windows Vista Application
  • Enables Visual Studio Tools for Office developers to build document-level customizations for Word and Excel 2007
  • Enables eMbedded Visual C++ 4.0 developers to use Visual Studio Code Name “Orcas” to build their existing applications
  • NET Framework improvements such as:
    • New managed add-in model enables developers to add a version-resilient extensibility model to their products.
    • Support for time zone conversion, enumeration and serialization, including cases where Daylight Saving Time rules change over time.
    • Reflection in Partial Trust, enabling sand box scenarios for all applications that depend on these features.
    • The ability to control the garbage collector’s latency mode
    • Improved CLR ThreadPool micro-performance and throughput for worker and IO completion
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