This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz by Sascha Corti. Original Post: Visual Studio "Orcas" September CTP available! Feed Title: Console.WriteLine("Hello World"); Feed URL: http://www.corti.com/WebLogSascha/blogxbrowsing.asmx/GetRss? Feed Description: A technology blog with a focus on the .NET framework, the Visual Studio .NET tools and the Windows server platform with of course the normal weblog-noise on what's happening in the industry and reviews of the latest geeky gadgets. Latest .NET Buzz Posts Latest .NET Buzz Posts by Sascha Corti Latest Posts From Console.WriteLine("Hello World");

Test-drive the new CTP release of Visual Studio Orcas by downloading it from here. The bits are available as a Virtual PC image, that allows you to run it alongside with other CTPs of the same technology and without changing your system.

The highlights of this CTP include (quoted):

• Improvements on the widely acclaimed Visual Studio 2005 product set
• Significant investments in improving product quality
• LINQ to Objects API
  • LINQ to Objects API supports queries over any .NET collection, such as arrays and Generic Lists. This API is defined in the System.Query namespaces inside System.Core.dll. Click here for more details about LINQ.
• Partial C# 3.0 Language Support: This CTP implements some of the new language features of C# 3.0
  • Local variable type interface
  • Lambda expressions
  • Object initializers
• Partial C# 3.0 IDE Support: In addition to the C# 3.0 language features there is partial IDE support
  • Colorization and New Keywords in Completion List
  • Edit and Continue Rude Edit Detection
• Partial VB 9.0 Language support (Due to differences in feature delivery schedules VB implementations of the above C# features will appear in a future CTP)
  • Local variable type inference and Option Infer switch
• VSTS Improvements in load & unit testing such as unit test for devices
• Device development improvements
  • VSTS integration
  • Access and modify device security configuration from the IDE
• Enables developers to build and debug a Windows Vista Application
• Enables Visual Studio Tools for Office developers to build document-level customizations for Word and Excel 2007
• Enables eMbedded Visual C++ 4.0 developers to use Visual Studio Code Name ���Orcas��� to build their existing applications
• NET Framework improvements such as:
  • New managed add-in model enables developers to add a version-resilient extensibility model to their products.
  • Support for time zone conversion, enumeration and serialization, including cases where Daylight Saving Time rules change over time.
  • Reflection in Partial Trust, enabling sand box scenarios for all applications that depend on these features.
  • The ability to control the garbage collector���s latency mode
  • Improved CLR ThreadPool micro-performance and throughput for worker and IO completion