It’s official folks! We have finally announced the lineup for Visual Studio 11 and all the goodies you get in each edition. Here is a breakdown of the key elements from lowest to highest feature set:
Express Editions
First, I want to make sure everyone knows what the Express editions are for: They are for non-professional developers who want a version of Visual Studio to create applications. Strictly speaking they are for individual or very small teams of developers who write code in their spare time and want to create applications in addition to their day job. In prior versions of the Express editions your choice of language was the usual method by which you chose an edition. So, for example, C# developers would choose the C# Express edition. This has now changed. The new focus is on WHAT you are trying to do rather than the language you want to do it in. With that said here are the new Express editions that will be available:
New Express editions for Windows Phone and Azure will come out when the next revision of those items ship.
Main Visual Studio 11 Editions
For people that do development-related work as part of their day job we offer a different set of SKUs. I won’t go into the details of what each version contains but, rather, just hit some of the highlights. Here is a high-level view of the features available in each SKU:
To see this list for yourself, go to http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/products/compare
Visual Studio 11 Test Professional
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/downloads#testpro
Test Professional is specifically geared to provide testing and collaboration features that can be used by testers, project managers, or anyone else who doesn’t need the complete feature set of Visual Studio. Refer to the comparison chart (above) for the items included in this SKU.
Visual Studio 11 Professional
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/downloads#professional
Many people who hear about our products mistakenly think the “professional” version is our top-of-the-line offering. There are actually two levels higher than Professional. The Professional Edition is meant to give the basics that a typical developer would need as part of their daily job. It includes a rich editor for writing code and essential elements for debugging that code. The Professional Edition can do all that an Express edition can do while allowing the freedom to choose between multiple different project types. Additionally it uses the new Unit Test Explorer but doesn’t contain the ability to do other types of testing out of the box. It is also missing other more advanced features, like Code Clone analysis, that are available in the higher level SKUs.
Visual Studio 11 Premium
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/downloads#premium
A significant step up from the Express and Professional Editions, the Premium Edition contains features for developers that have to deal with many high-end scenarios. Some of the key features included with Premium are Code Metrics, Code Clone analysis, and Coded UI Testing. In addition, it’s the first level where you can take advantage of PowerPoint Storyboarding, Feedback Management, Code Review, and (my personal favorite) Task Suspend/Resume. It’s definitely the minimum level I suggest for professional developers especially if they are planning to use the new Team Foundation Server.
Visual Studio 11 Ultimate
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/downloads#ultimate
Our top tier Visual Studio offering, Ultimate has all the features in Premium with some very important additions. IntelliTrace and IntelliTrace in production are the two most important features in my opinion. If you have Ultimate 2010 today and haven’t used IntelliTrace then you are missing out on a seriously useful feature. This SKU is also the only one that contains the Load Test and Web Performance Test features. Finally, there are Architecture Layer Diagrams and Dependency Graphs (another of my top favorites) that help keep a high quality bar and explore your code base respectively.
Make sure to check out the great new features in all the new editions and see which one fits you best.