As you have probably seen in Soma’s Blog, we have just released the Community technology preview(CTP) for the Visual Studio and the .NET Framework 4.0 as a Virtual PC image. I invite you to review the Overview of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 page to get a high level understanding of some of the pillars of this release.

This release is all about feedback!!!!!! I would like for you to go to the CTP Feedback Page To learn more about the CTP and get a link to the download. Make sure to review the CTP FAQ and head to the CTP Feedback forums to engage in a conversation with the product teams who have been working on this release. If you encounter any issues with the CTP, please visit the CTP Troubleshooting and Support forum.

In order to help you discover the new functionality in this release, teams have build a set of walkthroughs which are included in the Virtual PC image.  once you set up the CTP, I highly encourage you to follow the steps in each walkthrough and go to the forum corresponding to that walkthrough to give feedback and have a conversation with the product team who has been working on the functionality covered by that walkthrough.

Here is a list of all the walkthroughs grouped by area with the link to the forum feedback conversation about the scenario covered in that walkthrough:

• Visual Studio Editor
  • How to Adapt to the Visual Studio 2010 Editor
  • How to Add Syntax Coloring in the Visual Studio 2010 Editor
  • How to Highlight Text in the Visual Studio 2010 Editor
  • How to Customize the Start Page
  • How to provide Intellisense in the Visual Studio 2010 Editor
  • How to use the Shell Command to Add a Comment Adornment in the Visual Studio 2010 Editor
  • How to Float Document and Tool Windows Outside the IDE
• Core Coding Experience in Visual Basic and Visual C#
  • Call Hierarchy
  • Dynamic Programming in C#
  • TDD Support with the Generate From Usage Feature
  • Office Programmability in C# and Visual Basic
  • Quick Search for Files and Symbols
• Core Coding Experience in Visual C++
  • Using MSBuild to Create a Visual C++ Project
  • Add a Build Event to an MSBuild Project
  • Add a Custom Build Step to an MSBuild Project
  • Add Custom Build Tools to an MSBuild Project
  • How to Create a Custom Platform
  • How to Create Custom Property Pages
  • How to Use the C++ MSBuild Project System
  • Create a Project-to-Project Reference
  • Adding a Task Dialog to an Application
  • Add Support for the Restart Manager
  • Deploying a Visual C++ Application
  • Upgrade from Earlier Versions to Visual C++ 10
• Web Development in Visual Studio
  • Targeting Multiple version of ASP.Net
  • HTML Code Snippets
  • Transforming Web.Config for Deployment
  • Packaging & Deploying a Web Application which uses VS Development Web Server (Cassini)
  • Packaging & Deploying a Web Application which uses IIS
  • Setting Client IDs in ASP.NET Web Server Controls
• Office Development
  • Creating Your First Document-Level Customization for Word
  • Creating Your First Application-Level Add-in for Outlook
  • Creating a Custom Tab by Using the Ribbon Designer (Excel)
• Parallel Computing Platform
  • Parallel Debugging Tool windows in Visual Studio 2010
  • Parallel Programming with the .NET Framework 4.0
  • Parallel Programming with the Concurrency Runtime & the Parallel Pattern Library
  • parallel Profiling views in Visual Studio 2010
• Working with Data in WPF Applications
  • Using the Designer to Bind WPF Controls to Data in a Dataset
  • Using the Designer to Bind WPF Controls to Data in an Entity Data Model
• Building & Deploying Applications
• How to Create an Inline Task
• How to Deploy an Application by Using WiX
• Multi-targeting
• Working with Data and XML
  • Xml Schema Designer Walkthrough
  • The XSLT Profiler Add-in for Visual Studio 2008
  • Synchronizing Peer Databases Using Microsoft Sync Framework
• Charts & Reports
  • Adding a Chart to ASP.NET Web and Windows Forms Applications
• Visual Studio 2010 Team System & TFS
  • Formal 1 - Design, Planning, and Implementation: Designing Your Application at a Logical Level - Application Requirements
  • Formal 1 - Design, Planning, and Implementation: Designing Your Application at a Logical Level - Application Behavior and Structure
  • Formal 1 - Design, Planning, and Implementation: Setting Goals and Creating a Project Plan.
  • Formal 1 - Design, Planning, and Implementation: Exploring Your Existing Application
  • Formal 1 - Design, Planning, and Implementation: Validating Code Changes with the Layer Design.
  • Sprint 1 - Checkpoint Review: Reviewing the Sprint
  • Sprint 1 - Checkpoint Review: Finishing the Sprint
  • Sprint 1 - Checkpoint Review: Do Deeper Analysis of Bugs and Progress
  • Sprint 1 - Checkpoint Review: Holding a Great Sprint Retrospective.
  • Sprint 2 - Agile Planning: Agile Iteration Planning.
  • Sprint 2 - Agile Construction: Generating Interaction Sequences from Existing Code.
  • Sprint 2 - Agile Construction: Test-Driven Development
  • Sprint 2 - Agile Construction: Configuring Code Analysis Using Rule Sets
  • Sprint 2 - Agile Construction: Preventing Code Defects using Test Impact Analysis
  • Sprint 2 - Agile Construction: Creating Manual Test Cases and Adding to a Test Suite.
  • Sprint 2 - Agile Construction: Connecting Test Cases to User Stories
  • Sprint 2 - Agile Construction: Branch Visualization.
  • Sprint 2 - Agile Construction: Checking In With Build Validation.
  • Sprint 2 - Agile Testing: Executing Manual Tests
  • Sprint 2 - Agile Testing: Using the Historical Debugger to Diagnose Test Failures
  • Sprint 2 - Agile Testing: Running Tests to Verify a Fix

I would love to hear about your experience of providing us with feedback on the CTP so please drop me a note and let me know how we can do better in the future.

While waiting for the CTP to download, I encourage you to visit the Developer Division Connect site to browse the existing feedback, vote to help us prioritize issues and help others by providing workarounds. Also remember that if you have any suggestions or encounter any bugs while using any version of our products(Visual Studio, .Net Framework, VSTS, TFS, Silverlight…), please make sure to always submit them through the Developer Division Connect Site to make sure that the product teams hear your feedback.