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Back to VSLive! New York Show Daily Home
Microsoft Unveils Visual Studio's Future VSLive! New York, July 29, 2003
"The more you know about our tools roadmap, the better choices you can make," explained Eric Rudder, Senior Vice President of Microsoft's Server and Tools Business Unit. In today's keynote session at VSLive! New York, Rudder disclosed more details about future versions of Visual Studioand announced changes to Microsoft's partner program. As seen in this year's simultaneous release of Visual Studio 2003 and Windows Server 2003, future Visual Studio releases will be tied to key platform releases, he said. Future versions of Visual Studio "will not be a paradigm shift," said Ari Bixhorn, Lead Product Manager of Visual Studio. He contrasted the transition from VB6 to Visual Studio .NETand said the changes in Visual Studio .NET going forward are evolutionary, not revolutionary. The Visual Studio Roadmap deals with three key product releases:
Unsurprisingly, most of the roadmap discussion centered around Whidbey, the next version of Visual Studio. Orcas, at least two years away, received only general discussion. Marie Huwe, General Manager for the Developer and Platform Evangelism Division at Microsoft, said this early disclosure of future plans is part of "being more open with customers." The first Visual Studio releases were about "re-plumbing the platform," Huwe explained, but "Whidbey gives Microsoft the opportunity to be more customer-focused." She continued, "We've listened to the different types of developers that are really the most important to usVB, C++, C#, Windows and Web client developers, and so on. We've optimized the IDE for what's important to each of themto help make each developer the most productive."
Speaking of languages, Rudder revealed research this morning showing .NET use surpassing Java usebeating it in the second quarter of 2003 by 3 percent: 37 percent .NET use vs. Java's 34 percent. Whidbey, Microsoft expects, will continue this market growth. As Huwe explained, Microsoft has focused on enhancements in each language and for each development scenario to continue its legacy of developer productivity. VB, explained Bixhorn in a keynote demonstration, gets many long-awaited features, including "edit and continue," improved debug features, greatly simplified printing capabilities, and more (see the live demo here). C# enhancements, most of which have been disclosed already, include iterators, partial types, anonymous methods, and generics, he said. C++ enhancements include application instrumentation, which provides real-world usage info. There are also enhancements around managed C++. J# sports new browser controls and new "assert" and "volatile" keywords (insert your own Scott McNealy joke here). Bixhorn detailed some of the framework enhancements as well. For Windows application development, "there's a slew of new controls coming for Windows formsfrom a managed sound control to an office-style toolbar control," he said. No-touch deployment will be "taken to the next level" with version rollback, automatic framework installation, and support for Add/Remove Programs and the Start menu. For Web application development, the new master pages feature will provide "visual inheritance for the Web," he explained. Similarly, themes and skins "allow drag-and-drop components to have the look-and-feel of the overall site." Data access for Web applications will provide similar RAD features to Windows data access, eliminating much manual coding. Data forms will sport smart tags to enable paging, sorting, editing, and selecting. Huwe explained the general direction for Orcas as providing deep support for Windows Longhorn. "Longhorn," she said, "provides a great set of managed APIs." "Orcas, like Longhorn, will drive Web Services support deep," she continued. Orcas will allow developers to take advantage of these APIs, the trustworthy computing model, and more in both Longhorn client and server. About the Author |
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