Today, April 12th, 2011 (PST) is the first anniversary of the release of Visual Studio 2010. Microsoft has prepared some cool stuff for developers to collect for celebrate. In this post, I will share you what the new stuff is waiting for you as special gifts and offers.
UPDATED April 13th, 2011 PST, MIX’11 2nd Day
Silverlight 5 Beta
Silverlight 5 Beta brings new features: more than 1,500 new APIs, hardware acceleration support, double click support, real operating system window and significant performance improvements. This Beta version also includes a refresh release of the WCF RIA Service 1.0 SP2 Preview, Interested users can now download the Silverlight 5 Beta Tools for the Visual Studio 2010 SP1. Note that you cannot install this tool with Visual Studio 2010 RTM, it requires SP1 to work.
Visual Studio Async CTP SP 1 Refresh (Supports for Visual Studio 2010 SP1)
The next version of C# and Visual Basic will provide a new way to program with the asynchronous model. This refresh release provides updated compilers, assemblies and tools to use the new TPL-based asynchronous pattern. This release supports Visual Studio 2010 SP1. You can download it from here, you can also find the C# Language Specification and Visual Basic Language Specification for the Async CTP on MSDN.
I also blogged some articles about the new async pattern. Please refer to the following articles to learn more.
and there is a new Task Parallel Library Data Flow preview to evaluate.
**** END UPDATE ****
ADO.NET Entity Framework 4.1 RTM
Last month, Microsoft released the Release Candidate (RC) of the ADO.NET Entity Framework 4.1, and promised to announce the RTM in this month. Now, ADO.NET Entity Framework 4.1 is ready for download. This release brings the new DbContext API with Code First modeling feature for Entity Framework. So far I don’t know whether this release includes the support of enum types, which is a widely requested feature in the community; what I can know from the Release Notes is that the mapping to stored procedure is still not supported, but you can use an alternative way to direct call it through DbContext objects.
Visual Studio Power Tools
If you have not yet installed Visual Studio Power Tools, I encourage you to install it. Visual Studio Power Tools is a superset of utilities and enhancements for Visual Studio, including paste as HTML (very useful for writing blog or presentations), current line highlighting, well-organized tabs, auto-completion for braces, quick find (new), solution navigator etc. The latest version is 10.0.20318.14.
To install it, open your Visual Studio, click Tools, Extension Manager, then go to Online Gallery, as shown below.
Windows Azure Special Offers for MSDN Ultimate – Save $3,100 annually
Since April 12th, 2011, a new subscription plan for MSDN Ultimate (VL or retail) subscribers is available. The new plan offers:
- 1,500 hours computing time
- 30 GB storage
- 5 SQL Azure database
- 500,000 Access Control transactions
- 5 Service Bus connection (1 pack)
- 35 GB in, 35 GB out worldwide
The monthly usage excesses in the quota listed will be charged with MSDN Ultimate rate plan.
If you still not activate your MSDN Ultimate benefit for Windows Azure, please go to MSDN, sign in with your subscription account, go to My Account then click Windows Azure Platform.
After you complete the 3 easy steps, you will see a new subscription plan in your Microsoft Online Customer Portal.
NOTE: This offer is also available for BizSpark members.
Visual Studio Feature Packs
There are also some cool feature packs available for Visual Studio 2010.
- Visual Studio Feature Pack 2
- Visual Studio Load Test Pack
- Visual Studio Lab Management Pack
- Visual Studio Team Foundation Server with Project Server Integration
Check out these packs on the Visual Studio Feature Packs page on MSDN.
Happy Birthday to Visual Studio 2010!
(This post refers the content from SomaSegar’s Weblog. for a whole list of the gifts and offers, please visit the blog here. )
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