Microsoft Delivers First Public Beta of 'Orcas' and .NET 3.5

Microsoft released Beta 1 of its upcoming IDE and interim framework today. This next version of Visual Studio, called "Orcas" for now, will offer developers as many as 200 new features, according to Microsoft. Orcas is designed to provide a development environment for Microsoft's new and upcoming platform advances, such as those in the Windows Vista operating system, 2007 Office System, SQL Server 2005 and Windows "Longhorn" server. It also adds a wide breadth of tooling for everything from back-end data connectivity and unit testing to Web development and user interface (UI) design.

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