Visual Studio 2008 code name “Orcas” Beta 2 has just hit the road and, since it is Beta 2, this means Visual Studio 2008 is feature complete and is ready for RTM. Below, we would find a brief introduction of some of the new features introduced with VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 Beta 2.
A quick list of some of the new features are:
- Multi-Targeting support
- Web Designer and CSS support
- ASP.NET AJAX and JavaScript support
- Project Designer
- Data
- LINQ Language Integrated Query
The features listed and explained in this paper are not complete and this document intends to give you a forehand to start off with VS 2008.
1. Multi-Targeting Support
Earlier, each Visual Studio release only supported a specific version of the .NET Framework. For example, VS 2003 only works with .NET 1.1, and VS 2005 only works with .NET 2.0.
One of the major changes with the VS 2008 release is to support what Microsoft calls “Multi-Targeting”. This means that Visual Studio will now support targeting multiple versions of the .NET Framework, and developers will be able to take advantage of the new features that Visual Studio provides without having to migrate their existing projects and deployed applications to use a new version of the .NET Framework.
Now when we open an existing project or create a new one with VS 2008, we can pick which version of the .NET Framework to work with. The IDE will update its compilers and feature-set to match the chosen .NET Framework.
Features, controls, projects, item-templates, and references that do not work with the selected version of the Framework will be made unavailable or will be hidden.
Unfortunately, support has not been included to work with Framework versions 1.1 and earlier. The present release supports 2.0/3.0 and 3.5 .NET Frameworks.
Microsoft plans to continue multi-targeting support in all future releases of Visual Studio.
