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TechEd 2007, VS 2008 Shell, VS SDK

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Several things happened over the last couple of days. Last Friday, we released VS Orcas SDK June CTP. This is our second CTP release that targets the VS Orcas SDK Beta 1 release. Then, yesterday TechEd 2007 kicked off at Orlando. Several of my teammates (Aaron Marten, Douglas Hodges, Ken Levy, Anthony Cangialosi, Paolo Codato) are there to help evangelize VSX (VS eXtensibility). I heard from early reports that Aaron and Doug's Chalk Talk had over 100 people and there was standing room only. If you have been to chalk talks at TechEd or other conferences, you know that's incredible attendance. Don Demsak also presented yesterday at a breakout session, and I can't wait till I hear how that session went.

A big announcement at TechEd we made yesterday is the forthcoming availability of the Visual Studio Shell. This is a new product offering that offers developers a stripped down evnrionment in which they can integrate their own tools. The Shell is offered in 2 modes: integrated mode and isolated mode. The Integrated mode is essentially the same as the Premier Partner Edition (PPE) that we used to offer in VS .NET 2003 and VS 2005. The Isolated mode is what we internally call "AppEnv". This not only allows customers to integrate their own tools, but also allow them to have fine control over their isolated instance of the shell, including custom branding (splash screen, help about, application icon and title, etc.). This is a big deal because it significant lowers the barrier for tools developer to deliver a great user experience, leveraging on the worldclass Visual Studio IDE, while providing them the opportunity for custom branding. Here is an early press release on it from CRN.

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