The start of February 2009 was synonymous with the release of a new Community technology preview for the Live Framework Tools. James Senior, Microsoft partner technical specialist, indicated that the Live Framework Tools January CTP was an update designed to introduce a number of fixes compared to the previous release. Because of the CTP status, the latest build of Live Framework Tools was only accessible to participants in the Community Technical Preview program for the solution, and downloads were live only on Microsoft Connect. In fact, in order to access the download, but also to put the tools to good use, testers would need to sign up for Live Framework CTP Token.

“The Live Framework Tools January CTP includes a number of bug fixes. Debugging or running a Mesh-enabled Web Application which contains no changes from previous versions immediately launches the application instead of re-uploading the files. Mesh-enabled Web Applications created by the Live Framework Tools now have identical offers to those created through the Azure Services Developer Portal, which are generally less restrictive. Changes to the application's logo.png file will now be reflected in the icon that appears on the Live Desktop fixing the issue reported in this thread. Error messages and diagnostics have been improved,” Senior stated.

The January CTP of the Live Framework Tools represents a step forward for Microsoft in the company's way to enable developers to create, debug and upload Mesh-enabled web-based applications in the Live Deaktop and the Cloud. The software giant's perspective over the Live Framework Tools is that the solution provides a uniform programming model associated with Live Services permitting developers to work with a variety of platforms, programming languages, applications and devices. At the same time, the Live Framework Tools integrate with Microsoft's Visual Studio.

“The update was announced on Live Framework CTP Developer Connection on Connect. It is one of the three parts of the Live Framework SDK and Tools. The Live Framework Tools significantly decrease the time it takes to develop Mesh-enabled Web Applications in Visual Studio 2008. However, Visual Studio is not required to create applications using Live Framework,” stated Bruce Kyle, Microsoft ISV architect evangelist. “The Live Framework Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio, in conjunction with the Live Framework SDK, extend Visual Studio 2008 to simplify the end-to-end development experience of creating Mesh-enabled Web Applications by making it trivial to create, build, run, debug and package these applications for the Live Desktop.”