I get a lot of questions about the future. 

• When will Office and SharePoint release?  First half of 2010.
• Is VSTO part of Microsoft’s long term strategy?  Yes!  The Office tools shipped in VS 2008 and will ship in VS 2010 with lots of cool new improvements.  We strongly encourage and support .NET development on the Office and SharePoint platforms.
• Will there be better Team Development tools for Office and SharePoint developers?  Yes!  Future blog posts will tell you more.
• Are there any pricing changes?  See below note on SharePoint Designer.
• Can I get Office 2010 Beta or SharePoint Server 2010 Beta?  Yes, eventually.  A few thousand enterprises, small businesses, developers, ISVs, Partners, schools and families have been invited to join an early private “technical preview” beta, and the rest of the world will get to test a later public beta.  No dates have been announced.  Read the Computer World article on the Office Beta.
• Should I sanitize my keyboard to prevent the H1N1 flu?  Yes, but don’t put it in the dishwasher like my internship roommate did after a cola spill.  It was hilarious, and half the keys still worked! 

In the coming months you will see a few more blog posts about the future and plenty of blog posts about developing today with Visual Studio 2008.  For now, I’d like to review all of the official posts that Microsoft has released about developing SharePoint Server 2010 solutions:

Press Release on SharePoint Server 2010

SharePoint Designer is now FREE

Soma’s blog post “SharePoint tools support in Visual Studio”

Official Visual Studio 2010 home page

PDF of the Official Visual Studio 2010 Product Overview

Channel9 Interview with the Lead Program Manager designing the Office and SharePoint tools in VS 2010

If I’ve forgotten any of the official Microsoft announcements in this post, then please leave a comment with a link.  Thanks!

-Christin Boyd, Program Manager