Datasheet

8
❘
CHAPTER 1 HISTORY OF VISUAL STUDIO
With this release, Microsoft widened the camp of programmers using Visual Studio with two new
editions:
Express Editions — These editions (they are free) targeted students, hobbyists, and other
developers coding for fun. Instead of giving a “ geese ” version of Visual Studio for free,
Microsoft created language - related kits with the names of Visual C# 2005 Express, Visual
Basic 2005 Express, Visual Web Developer, and Visual C++ 2005 Express, equipped with
the full language feature set, but with limited tool support.
Team System Editions — Microsoft wanted to move Visual Studio out of the box of
development tools and position it among the high - end enterprise development tools. Team
System Editions provided out - of - the - box integration with Microsoft ’ s Team Foundation
Server 2005, and added powerful productivity tools for specifi c development project roles.
There are four editions for Developers, Testers, Architects, Database Designers, and a fi fth
one, Visual Studio Team Suite, which includes all of the features of these four editions in a
single package.
Compare the list of installed products in the
splash screen of Visual Studio 2005 Team
Edition for Software Developers (shown in
Figure 1 - 3) with the list shown in Figure 1 - 2.
The eye - catching difference tells you how many
tools were added to the new editions.
Following the initial release, a few special -
purpose products were also shipped and
integrated into the IDE (such as Visual Studio
Tools for Offi ce and Visual Studio Tools for
Applications).
An unusual thing happened in November 2006:
.NET Framework 3.0 was released without
any accompanying Visual Studio version. This
major .NET version kept the CLR untouched
and added infrastructure components to the framework — Windows Workfl ow Foundations (WF),
Windows Communication Foundations (WCF), Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), and
CardSpace. Developers could download Visual Studio extensions to use these new .NET 3.0
technologies.
VISUAL STUDIO 2008
In November 2007, one year after .NET 3.0, Visual Studio 2008 was shipped together with .NET
Framework 3.5. Although the .NET CLR was still version 2.0, the new query expression syntax
(LINQ) feature in .NET 3.5 demanded changes to the existing tools.
The most popular feature of version 2008 was multi - targeting. With this, Visual Studio developers
could specify the target framework (.NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, and .NET 3.5) of their projects, or even
➤
➤
FIGURE 1 - 3: Products installed with Visual Studio
2005 Team Edition for Software Developers
CH001.indd 8CH001.indd 8 9/6/10 4:29:40 PM9/6/10 4:29:40 PM