Microsoft has just released the first Community Technology Preview (CTP) of
the Visual Studio Codename "Orcas" Express Edition family of products.
This marks the first publicly available release of this software and, as such,
it's probably the first chance many of you may have had to catch a glimpse of
the new version.
Unfortunately, as is often the case with Beta software, it's a little rough
around the edges. Personally I don't recommend installing it on any machine
you don't mind rebuilding from scratch... and it's certainly not ready for use on your
primary development machine. So... for those of you who don't have a separate machine
to play with it on, I thought I'd give you a quick sneak peek at what you can
expect from the next version of everyone's favorite free development environment.
Since I focus mainly on Web development, I'm only going to talk about
Microsoft Visual Web Developer Codename "Orcas" Express Edition.
If Web development isn't you're thing, you'll be happy to know that
CTP versions of Visual Basic, Visual C#, and Visual C++ are also available for download.
Download
The first step is naturally getting a copy of the software. There are two methods you can use to
install the software: the online version and the "manual" install that you burn to a CD or DVD.
Both options are available from the
Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" Express Editions Download page.
Installation
I chose to install on my test Vista box (since it's due to be rebuilt anyway)
and decided I'd just use the online version.
It downloaded a small setup program which then asked me which features I
wanted to install and downloaded them for me.
The large download went quickly, but unfortunately the installation
did not go as smoothly as one would have hoped.
The Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 version that the installer downloaded for
me refused to install. I tried rebooting the machine and still had no luck.
Doing a web search led me to this page:
Error Installing Orcas Beta 1
which mentions an issue when installing from a path with a space in the name.
Now while the path I had been using didn't have a space in it ("C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Temp\20404.00\1033\wcu\dotnetframework"), I tried copying the
.NET Framework 3.5 temporary setup files to a folder off the root of my drive and
installing it manually from there. It seemed to work fine and when I re-ran the
VWD setup it completed without any further errors.
The Application
At first glance, the CTP looks quite similar to the current VWD 2005.
Upon closer examination however, you'll notice that there are a number of new features:
Targeting a specific version of the .NET Framework (2.0, 3.0, 3.5)
New HTML/ASP.NET page designer (split view, CSS and improved layout support, nested master pages, etc.)
Many of the features are simply support for new technology, but the one change you'll probably notice
first and will most likely affect you the most in your day to day use of the tool is the new HTML designer.
To illustrate the difference, I opened the same project side-by-side in VWD2005 and in the VWD "Orcas" CTP.
The first screen is the page in VWD 2005's Design mode. The save button is highlighted as you can see by both the
resize handles and the quick selection bar at the bottom.
The next screen is the same page in VWD "Orcas" CTP's Split mode. It still has the Design and Source modes
that you're used to, but in Split mode you get to see both at once.
Clicking on a control in the Design pane
automatically highlights the control's declaration in the Source pane. You'll see that I've
once again highlighted the save button. Just as before, the resize handles and the quick selection bars indicate
this, but you'll notice they look slightly different. You'll also notice that the tooltip that the designer display
now tells you not only what type of control the selected object is, but also indicates the control's name.
In addition to being more helpful, the designer's also gotten smarter when it comes to CSS and layout.
Time will tell just how good it actually is, but by default it was placing style information in a style
section in the page's head as opposed to just hard coding the properties to the control. I didn't have a
chance to play with it too much, but it seemed relatively cusomizable and the addition of a style toolbar
makes it seem like they've put some work into it.
Overall it looks like the "Orcas" release will be a decent upgrade to the Visual Studio Express line.
It doesn't seem like it's going to be a revolutionary upgrade, but it does seem like there'll be enough
new technology incorporated and enough usability improvements so that it'll get adopted pretty quickly.
More Information
While these links will probably change as we get closer to launch, for the time being they should get you
any additional information you may want about the "Orcas" Express Editions:
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