14 DAY TRIAL // Today and only today could a theme pack like this slide. After all, April 12, 2010 is synonymous with the general availability of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4. And what better way to celebrate the launch of Microsoft’s next-generation development tools and platform than with a Visual Studio 2010-based theme created for Windows 7. Put together by Rob Caron, Microsoft content architect, the VS2010 theme for Windows 7 contains three wallpapers featuring the new visual identity of the development platform, which was overhauled during the development process.
At this point in time, the downloads for Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework are not live. However, the promise from the Redmond company is that both VS 2010 and .NET 4 will be available soon, and that MSDN subscribers will be the first to grab the RTM bits. I’ll make sure to provide and update when that happens.
Until then, the Windows 7 Visual Studio 2010 theme is bound to offer a little consolation. “This is a simple Visual Studio theme I put together for Windows 7 on my laptop,” Caron revealed, and provided the download link. I for one have run into troubles installing the VS 2010 theme on my machine. However, using 7-Zip, you can easily extract the contents of the .themepack file, namely the three wallpapers and the Windows Aero Glass settings.
“Visual Studio 2010 provides a great deal of enhancements for developers to make it easier to develop applications including a new editor which now uses the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and multiple monitor support. Visual Studio 2010 represents a major investment by Microsoft to provide developers with the best tools for developing applications targeting the latest Microsoft releases such as Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Phone 7, and Windows Azure,” Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc revealed.
UPDATE: Download Visual Studio 2010 RTM and .NET Framework 4 RTM from MSDN.