This week is VSLive in the States and a number of new announcements were made. One for example is the announcement that Microsoft will release soon 4 new CTPs (Community Technology Previews). Interesting is that these CTPs deal with technologies that are already based on the new version of Visual Studio.NET (code-named 'Orcas'). I know of a fifth one that Office developers will certainly like but I leave it up to the Microsoft guys to reveal that one. So, what can we expect (this is all based on an VSLive newsletter that I received this morning):

  • VSTA, or Visual Studio Tools for Applications. This CTP should be available this Friday, Feb 3, 2006. If you attended PDC, you might have heard about the new InfoPath '12' and its new managed object model. VSTA replaces the Microsoft Script Editor and will allow you to hook up C# or VB.NET directly with your InfoPath forms. I have been doing some tests with it and it works great. Much better than before.
  • LINQ, a VB add-in that builds on the earlier LINQ preview. You can download it here now and read more here. LINQ is Language INtegrated Query. I saw some demos on it and Peter Himschoot and Wim Uyttersprot (both from U2U) have written a nice article on it in the Dutch .NET magazine.
  • CIDER, which is a VS Designer for WinFX Windows Presentation Foundation tools, available in the December 16 download and coming soon in a new one, I believe, since the December preview is very basic (more details in the WIKI).
  • TFS -- Team Foundation Server, discussed in more depth elsewhere, should have a release candidate ready soon before the anticipated March release.