Public Sector Developer Weblog : (How To Videos) Get up to speed on Visual Studio 2008

(How To Videos) Get up to speed on Visual Studio 2008

Visual Studio 2008 (and the .NET Framework 3.5) is set to release to manufacturing in a few weeks (November timeframe). I've been working with it for about 6 months myself, and once you get pass the BETA "issues" it is a nice upgrade over Visual Studio 2005 in a variety of areas.

I specifically like these news features:

Multi-targeted frameworks
- Within VS2008, the IDE gives you a choice of working with the .NET 2.0, 3.0, or 3.5 framework
- Which means that I don't have to have Visual Studio 2005 (for backward compatibility) and Visual Studio 2008 installed to get the new features
- The ability to switch frameworks overtime, so that I can start with .NET 2.0, for example, and as my company/customer approves .NET 3.0/3.5, I can switch my project to the new framework, and Visual Studio 2008 will automatically give me new choices (UI, Controls, Coding options).
LINQ (Language INtegrated Query)
- The ability to treat almost any object as data
- One querying language for Objects, XML, SQL Data, etc.
- and more. You should really watch the video on this one
New features for the Web Developer, among them
- Split View in the IDE, which will synchronize the HTML view and the GUI view, so that you can work in either and see the results synchronized in both panes.
- New CSS Support. Features that you've seen in higher end HTML editors, but now in Visual Studio, so that you don't have to switch tools during Development
Full ASP.NET Ajax integration
And much more