Microsoft adds to Visual Studio tools line
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2005 Standard Edition targets developers working in small organizations.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft is planning to add the ability to develop Windows Live applications to its Visual Studio toolkit as a way to build more of a developer base for its online services platform. The company is adding controls to Visual Studio 2008 that will allow developers to connect Windows Live services to new applications they're building, said Adam Sohn, a director in the Online Services Group at Microsoft. The company is currently testing the technology internally and may also include it in the current 2005 version of Visual Studio, but that is yet to be determined, he said. A public beta of the technology is expected in October or November, Sohn said. Details of the Windows Live toolkit first appeared online a public interview posted on the LiveSide blog with Angus Logan, a Microsoft technical program manager. Microsoft Monday confirmed that the interview was done at the Mix U.K. '07 conference last week. In the interview, Logan indicated that Microsoft would discuss the technology at the DevConnections conference in Las Vegas in early November. Windows Live is the brand name for set of Web-based services -- such as search, instant-messaging, e-mail, blogging, and photo-sharing -- Microsoft offers, but the company also considers Windows Live a development platform in the same way its Windows OS and Office applications are a platform, Sohn said. Microsoft has made APIs for those services available on its Windows Live developer site. Microsoft has been savvy over the years in leveraging its large developer base to bolster new technologies and help the company compete in areas where it does not have first-mover advantage, and the area of online services is no different. Microsoft is chasing Google for online advertising dollars and hopes to use Windows Live services to compete. Microsoft also charges $.025 per user per year for developers that use Windows Live services in applications that have more than 1 million unique users per month, Sohn said. Sohn said that while the business case for growing the developer base for the Windows Live platform is obviously important, Microsoft also hopes to encourage the development of cutting-edge Web applications to help the industry as a whole promote more interesting user experiences on the Web. "Over time if the industry is doing better, we're going to do better as well," he said.
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Microsoft said on Tuesday that its Visual Studio 2008 IDE (integrated development environment) is now widely available.The tool set was released to Microsoft Developer Network subscribers in November. It is now available to volume licensing and retail customers, the company said in a blog posting.It includes a new version of the .NET framework, version 3.5, which is aimed at taking advantage of two new subsystems Microsoft included in Windows Vista -- WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) and WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation). WCF is for building service-oriented applications, while WPF is for creating more dynamic user interfaces. Microsoft also built Visual Studio 2008 with the idea of making it easier for developers to create cross-platform applications.Visual Studio comes in various editions, from a free version called Visual Studio Express to a version for entire developer teams called Visual Studio Team System. More information is on the MSDN site.Visual Studio is one of the three products that Microsoft will highlight in a launch event in Los Angeles at the end of next month. The other two are Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008. Those other new products won&#39;t both be available at that time, however.The new version of Microsoft&#39;s server OS is expected to be available on the day of the launch, but last week Microsoft pushed back the release of SQL Server 2008 until the third calendar quarter of the year. It had said previously that the software would be available by midyear.
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Microsoft has previewed &quot;Whitehorse,&quot; a set of visual design tools intended to support the design and validation of Web services-based applications.
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Microsoft on Monday released its promised desktop search application, focusing on adding local e-mail and file search into MSN&#39;s browser toolbar, Outlook and the Windows operating system.
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SaphireSteel Software, which helps Microsoft Visual Studio users work with the Ruby on Rails Web framework, launched on Monday a version of its Ruby In Steel IDE embedded with Visual Studio 2008 capabilities.Ruby In Steel Text Edition, priced at $49, is hosted in the Visual Studio 2008 Shell, which enables tools to be built based on the Visual Studio IDE. With Text Edition, developers do not need to have their own copy of Visual Studio as they have with the previously released Ruby In Steel Developer Edition, said Huw Collingbourne, SapphireSteel technology director."We put all our support into Visual Studio so the end-user gets a Ruby-flavored edition of Visual Studio," with its attendant capabilities, Collingbourne said.Use of the Visual Studio Shell gives SapphireSteel a chance to compete with Eclipse-based IDEs, such as CodeGear's 3rdRail, which also is billed as a Rails IDE, SapphireSteel said. But 3rdRail costs $399.Text Edition does not support Microsoft languages like C# or C++, but HTML designer and JavaScript support is included. While lacking the high-performance debugger and IntelliSense code completion capabilities of the $199 Ruby In Steel Developer Edition, Text Edition features both RHTML and embedded Ruby in Rails editing."[Developers] have the choice of which templating system they want to develop in," said Collingbourne.Ruby in Steel Text Edition and tools like it received a thumbs-up from Ruby on Rails founder David Heinemeier Hansson in an e-mail on Monday."I have not used it myself, but I'm very happy to see this growth spurt of new tools dedicated to Ruby on Rails crop up," Hansson said. "Ruby In Steel is particularly interesting to developers coming over from the Microsoft world as Visual Studio is a familiar environment to them. That'll likely ease the transition."Other features in Text Edition include code coloring and folding for focusing on specific parts of code, auto-expand snippets plus a snippet editor, bracket and keyword matching, and code formatting tools.Integrated debugging with step into/over/watch variables is featured; developers can see how variables change.Also offered is customization with alternative color schemes, integrated command prompt and docked interactive Ruby and IRB (Interactive Ruby) consoles. Users also get an all-in-one setup program to install Visual Studio, Ruby, Ruby In Steel, and the MySQL database. Comprehensive documentation and help are offered as well.
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InfoWorld - Application developers are getting a raft of new options this week with Sun updating J2SE, Borland upping its CORBA ante, and Compuware detailing products that will work with Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005 toolbox.
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Microsoft this week previewed its upcoming Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition, which will ship next year. The company says the tool will help software developers in small to mid-size organizations
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Microsoft is expanding a plan to draw mainframe customers to Windows for high-end applications. Under a program with the internal code name Mission Critical Microsoft, the company is trying to extend its current
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Mainsoft has introduced a new version of Mainsoft for J2EE, which now lets Visual Studio developers build applications for Java-based systems.
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Microsoft said Monday that it had released a improved version of its Robotics Studio platform, adding support for Windows Embedded CE 6.0 and Windows Mobile, as well as programming improvements.
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A software tools maker is staking its future on helping developers prepare for streamlined coding for Web services (define) as well as Avalon, the graphics display component in the works for Longhorn, Microsoft&#39;s next version of Windows.
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Microsoft Tuesday released a handful of software products that are key elements in its drive to develop a comprehensive management platform for Windows.
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New features in Version 2.0 include support of the Visual Studio 2005 IDE and the .Net Framework 2.0, which lets developers leverage Microsoft Windows development skills to run applications on Linux and Java platforms.
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Microsoft Corp. is continuing its push into the enterprise-level development market with a new framework and tool for Visual Studio Team System.
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The tools, part of an upcoming Visual Studio update, are focused on making it easier to create customized Web applications.
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Continuing to fill out its Visual Studio tools line, Microsoft on Monday is announcing Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition, intended for developers working in small organizations.