14 DAY TRIAL // Although Windows Server 2008 (RTM expected in February) and SQL Server 2008 (RTM expected in Q3 2008) are yet to be released to manufacturing in light of the fast approaching Heroes Happen Here launch in Los Angeles on February 27, 2008, Visual Studio 2008 is ready and set to go. The 2008 edition of Microsoft's development suite is tailored to Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, and it will deliver a consistent evolution in comparison to its predecessor Visual Studio 2005. But just delivering the right tools to do the job done is not limited at providing VS 2005 or 2008. And in this regard, the Redmond company announced the introduction of the MSDN Code Gallery.
"The MSDN Code Gallery is a portal for snippets, samples and other resources. In it you can find pages that describe samples and supporting documents including screenshots and design documents. In addition, you will find hosted conversations about these samples, sample projects or other resources that have been provided to the community. This destination is open to the entire community to contribute content to. Code Gallery is, at its core, simply a community enabled site where we share developer enabling information and resources that will be integrated into the MSDN experience," explained S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president, of the Developer Division at Microsoft.
The Redmond company is essentially trying to build a comprehensive developer community focused on a portal complete with downloading and sharing capabilities. Matthew Manela, Software Development Engineer at Microsoft, revealed that the Code Gallery was already used by teams from Redmond. Somasegar did however mention that the portal offers nothing but storage and comes with zero project management capabilities. For open source project hosting, management and collaboration, Microsoft offers CodePlex. Still, when using the MSDN Code Gallery, you will have to keep in mind that the Redmond company only provides the storage. And has no control over the resources on the website.
"The Code Gallery software is built from the Codeplex application. This means you get a ton of feature likes, discussions, issue tracker and wiki pages to describe your content in detail. All these features make Code Gallery a very attractive place to store and share content you create. You may be wondering why should you post things to Code Gallery rather than you blog. This is a good question and in fact we were asked this question from many Microsoft employees as well. The benefits are that it is more visible to search engines and it is easier for people to find your content since they have a one stop shop to go to," Manela added.