It has been a while... I have to admit I have been much more active in Visual Studio forums on www.asp.net than here. Anyway, what have we been doing since we shipped Whidbey? Orcas development process is quite different from what we used to have. This time we begin with MQ milestone (Q is for quality). See also Channel 9 video. We are front-loading bug fixes and implementing process improvements so that we will be entering coding phase in much better shape with no bug debt. Basically all bugs postponed in Whidbey got reactivated and we are not allowed to postpone them again. We only have three options:

1. If the issue will not likely be fixed ever, resolve as won't fix.
2. If it is a bug which has to be fixed, fix it now, before coding begins.
3. If the issue looks more like feature request, convert bug to a feature request and add to the list of features to consider in the next release.

The other work in MQ includes processing feedback from customers filed on the MSDN product feedback Web site, improving build process, improving testing automation infrastructure, writing more tests, ensure checkin tests provide certain minimum level of code coverage, collecting feature requests and begin assigning priorities, making architectural changes that we need to lay foundation for Orcas development, and so on.

Some team members have been busy with implemting a few features that we didn't have time to add to Whidbey but customers really need, such as Web Deployment Projects and  Web Application Projects.

At this point we are still in the MQ milestone, there is work left to do, bugs to fix and MSDN feedback to collect, but the bug debt is getting smaller and smaller, which is a Good Thing :-).

By the way, we are still hiring. We have junior as well as senior positions open. You can send resume directly to me if you wish to join Visual Studio Web Tools team.