14 DAY TRIAL // At the beginning of this week, Microsoft made one more definitive step towards the Global Launch of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 on February 27, 2008, with the release to manufacturing of its latest version of the Visual Studio development suite. Although the final product is not scheduled to become available until the end of February of the coming year, MSDN subscribers can already grab it in tandem with the .NET Framework 3.5. Visual Studio 2008 is tailored on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, formerly codenamed Longhorn, and Microsoft even provided a list of incentives designed to convince developers to jump on the latest edition of VS.
"We put together a great document called the Top Ten Reasons to Upgrade to Visual Studio 2008, which I'd encourage developers to take a look at - and that's really just the beginning of what this release offers. Visual Studio 2008 delivers over 250 new features, makes improvements to existing features including performance work on many areas, and we've made significant enhancements to every version of Visual Studio 2008, from the Express Editions to Visual Studio Team System (VSTS)," revealed S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft.
The "Top Ten Reasons to Upgrade" resource is available for download via this link and offers developers Microsoft's own perspective over the relevance of Visual Studio 2008. According to the Redmond company, Visual Studio 2008 will enable developers to: "work with data in a unified and integrated way; work with user interface designers, employ the latest web user interface techniques, build stunning applications for Windows Vista, build higher quality applications with integrated unit testing, enjoy great support for designing web applications, build applications that run on multiple versions of the .net Framework, build Office-based applications, use workflow and communication tools, and benefit from performance and stability across the board."