Still Here, Yes
First, apologies for not keeping my blog up to date. It always seems like there's some fire to put out, and blogging keeps taking a back seat. Well, no more.
So, on to current events. If you haven't yet seen the new Connect Site, you should check it out. The latest release was officially "Connect 3.0", and involved a large number of changes to the Connect web site as well as to the Connect team. We've reorganized the team and now have a group of talented folks whose entire job is to focus on the user experience. Credit them for the bulk of the user interface improvements made in Connect 3.0. The rest of the team works on what we call the "Connect platform", which basically means we focus on the technology that drives the site and the related internal services.
If you have any feedback or suggestions on the new site, please let us know at the Connect Web Site Improvement site at http://connect.microsoft.com/Connect.
We're already working on Connect 3.2, our next point release, containing a few focused updates, performance improvements and bug fixes. In fact, we're winding down on the development cycle for that release, and it should be ready for prime time in the next few weeks. I'll let you know when we have a more specific update.
Further down the road, the next external release is Connect 3.5, which will be a larger release but still focused on improvements and fixes, with only a limited set of new functionality. That's not fully baked in terms of schedule, so I'll let you know when I have more information on it.
And in the dim and misty distance, the next major update to Connect- Connect 4.0- is already in planning. We've got some exciting stuff planned, and I'll be talking about some of it here over the next few posts.
As for me, one reason I've been somewhat quiet on this front of late is that I've had my head down on a major internal Connect update to our internal feedback tracking systems- in other words, the code that routes your feedback and suggestions to the proper folks here.
