.NET 3.5

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Improved WPF designers SQL Server 2008 support ADO.NET Entity Designer Visual Basic and Visual C++ components and tools (including an MFC-based Office 2007 style ‘Ribbon’) Visual Studio Team System Team Foundation Server (TFS) addresses customer feedback on version control usability and performance, email integration with work item tracking and full support for hosting on SQL Server 2008 Richer JavaScript support, enhanced AJAX and data tools, and Web site deployment improvements The .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Performance increases between 20-45% for WPF-based applications – without having to change any code WCF improvements that give developers more control over the way they access data and services Streamlined installation experience for client applications Improvements in the area of data platform, such as the ADO.NET Entity Framework, ADO.NET Data Services and support for SQL Server 2008’s new features Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1 A number of improvements have been made to Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation including: ...

Today I came across an interesting extension pattern that I didn’t know how the runtime would react. Normally when you do something like the following: string s = null; Console.WriteLine(s.Trim()); // throws NullReferenceException You get a NullReferenceException meaning that you didn’t first check to see if the object was null before trying to call one of its methods. This is pretty common and results in patterns that usually look like this: ...

Scott Guthrie has announced that Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 are now available for download and provides a tour of some of the new features. If you are a MSDN subscriber, you can download your copy from the MSDN subscription site (note: some of the builds are just finishing being uploaded now - so check back later during the day if you don’t see it yet). If you are a non-MSDN subscriber, you can download a 90-day free trial edition of Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite here. A 90-day trial edition of Visual Studio 2008 Professional (which will be a slightly smaller download) will be available next week. A 90-day free trial edition of Team Foundation Server can also be downloaded here. If you want to use the free Visual Studio 2008 Express editions (which are much smaller and totally free), you can download them here. If you want to just install the .NET Framework 3.5 runtime, you can download it here.