Microsoft Visual Studio
Microsoft Visual Studio is a series of IDEs by Microsoft.
Visual Studio includes one or more of the following. Components can be added in a modular fashion to the main application.
- Visual Basic .NET, or prior to .NET, Visual Basic
- Visual C++
- Visual C#
- Visual J#
- Microsoft WebDev
- Microsoft SQL Server
In the past, the following products were included:
- Interdev, a web page development application used for modifying Active Server Pages as well as HTML and other web scripting files.
- Visual J++, a Java development tool
- Visual FoxPro xBase programming language now allied to but independent from the Visual Studio platform.
Major Visual Studio versions include:
- Visual Studio 5.0
- Visual Studio 6.0 (still popular with VB6 developers who can not shift to VB.NET)
- Visual Studio .NET (.NET Framework 1.0)
- Visual Studio .NET 2003 (.NET Framework 1.1)
- Visual Studio .NET 2005, code named "Whidbey" (currently in beta)
- Visual Studio 2005 Express (currently in beta)
- Visual Studio 2005 Team System (currently in beta)
Visual Studio 2006 will be released at the same time as Windows Longhorn, it currently is code named Orcas.
Add-ins
Visual Studio supports Microsoft's Add-in Architecture, a facility for developers to write extensions (or add-ins) for Visual Studio to extend its capabilities. These add-ins work as plug-ins to Visual Studio and offer some benefits not available from Visual Studio itself. For example, some add-ins offer optimized builds or enhanced programming tools or other RAD features. Some of the more popular add-ins include:
- Xoreax Software's IncrediBuild
- Whole Tomato Software's Visual Assist
- Joshua Jensen's Workspace Whiz
As with many helpful applications, some developers can become very attached to the functionality some add-ins provide. In a Game Developer Magazine "Post Mortem" article, the author stated that their programmers felt handicapped when required to develop without their Visual Studio add-ins.
See also
External links
- Microsoft's Visual Studio product page
- Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005 Express Beta page
- Microsoft's Visual Studio Team System page
Categories: Software stubs | Microsoft software | Computer programming tools