Visual Studio 2008 delivers key advances for developers in three primary pillars:

  • Improve Developer Productivity
  • Manage the Application Life Cycle
  • Employ the Latest Technologies

The developer advancements delivered on these three pillars are achieved through seven different technology areas:

  • · Develop Smart Client Applications
    • Visual Studio 2008 delivers new and easy ways for developers to build smart clients by providing a comprehensive set of tools and classes that simplify integrating smart clients with new or existing web applications, and by handling local caching of data for disconnected scenarios.
  • · Create Microsoft Office applications
    • Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) is now fully integrated into Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition. Visual Studio enables developers to customize various Office applications, such as Outlook® and PowerPoint®, to improve user productivity and simplify deployment.
  • · Build Windows Vista Applications
    • Developers will be able to easily leverage new platform technologies, and deliver more compelling applications to their customers, by effortlessly incorporating new Windows Presentation Foundation features into both existing Windows Forms applications and new applications.
  • · Handle Data More Productively
    • The introduction of Language Integrated Query (LINQ), and various other data access improvements, now enable developers to deal with data using a consistent programmatic approach, perform data access with new data design surfaces, and use built-in classes for the occasionally connected design pattern.
  • · An Improved Developer Experience Overall
    • Visual Studio 2008 delivers a better developer experience overall through the combination of significant product quality improvements, changes to the way the most popular design surfaces return errors to the user, and simplifying the user’s ability to adopt the toolset and framework separately.
  • · Enable New Web Experiences
    • Beyond the secure, reliable and extensible infrastructure of IIS, developers can easily create efficient, interactive Web applications. The seamless integration and familiar programming model of ASP.NET AJAX enables more efficient client-side execution to deliver end-users a more responsive Web interface.
  • · Improves Application Life-cycle Management (ALM)
    • ALM provides great support, not only for managing the entire software development life cycle but also for the critical interaction with the final end-users and IT stakeholders of an enterprise application.

Fine out more here http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/f/d/bfdb8b1b-323a-435e-b328-cadc8b67bbee/An%20Overview%20of%20Visual%20Studio%202008.xps

Joel Reyes