Microsoft Office

Visual Studio

From Microsft Q&A:

PressPass: Let’s take a step back for a second. You introduced Visual Studio 2008 in February 2008. What has been the customer reaction to it since then?

Zander: Very positive. Today there are more than 14,000 customers for Visual Studio Team System 2008 deploying more than 500,000 clients.

One of the new user interface screens for Visual Studio 2010.
Click for high-res image

Customers’ favorite features include Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) technology, which significantly reduces the amount of code developers have to write and speeds up the development process.

We’ve also heard anecdotally from customers like AppPoint Software Solutions, Xerox Corp., Xcalia S.A., TestFactory and Veracity Solutions Inc. that they have seen benefits in all phases of the software development life cycle, from early testing and development to final deployment and customization.

Since the release of Visual Studio 2008, we’ve continued to add some new functionality to help customers get more out of their existing investments, such as the Client Profile introduced with SP1, which streamlines development and deployment of client-based applications. We’ve also improved the performance and scalability of Team Foundation Server considerably, responding to growing needs for greater scalability.

We are currently offering several promotions for Visual Studio 2008 at http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio.

What’s different with this new UI?

Zander: There’s a lot more to the new UI than just a pretty face. We’ve completely redesigned the UI for Visual Studio 2010 with one goal: making developers’ jobs easier.

The new UI for Visual Studio 2010 aims to help developers work smarter with streamlined features and increased control of the Integrated Development Environment (IDE), but without creating a new learning curve for existing Visual Studio users. As developers, we spend a lot of time in our IDE. So it’s all about how to make your experience with the IDE most successful. Visual Studio 2010 now features a reorganized layout with file menus and commands on a “shelf” at the top of the IDE.