Visual Studio 11 Beta and .NET 4.5 Beta Available Now!

I am very happy to announce that the Visual Studio 11 Beta and .NET 4.5 Beta releases are now available for download.

I previously blogged about some of the innovation that went into the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview releases at //BUILD/:

• Visual Studio 11 Programming Language Advances
• Visual Studio 11 .NET Advances
• Visual Studio 11 IDE Advances
• Visual Studio 11 Platform Tooling Advances
• Visual Studio 11 ALM Advances

Since //BUILD/, we’ve been hard at work on the beta releases, and I’m excited at the improvements that have been made on the feature sets previously shown, as well as on the slew of new functionality and value that’s been added.

For a more in-depth view on these beta releases, see Jason Zander’s blog.  And for those of you yearning to learn more about how to build great apps for Windows 8, check out the new Windows 8 app developer blog.

Since the Visual Studio 11 “sneak peek” event held on Thursday, we’ve been listening intently to all of the feedback you’ve provided.  We very much appreciate the comments you’ve shared with us, and we look forward to hearing more from you once you’ve begun using the beta bits.

Namaste!

Comments

• Anonymous
  February 29, 2012
  i'm very happy too :) i can't wait to try it and the new amazing features :D

• Anonymous
  February 29, 2012
  Can vs2011 beta be installed side-to-side with vs2010? I mean if I can have them both installed

• Anonymous
  February 29, 2012
  HoOz_Malhas, great, we look forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback. jim, yes, you can install and use Visual Studio 11 Beta alongside Visual Studio 2010.

• Anonymous
  February 29, 2012
  Do we need to UNinstall the previous VS11 (preview) first before installing this VS11 Beta?  (0r will the installer take care of that?

• Anonymous
  February 29, 2012
  Mike, you will need to uninstall Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview before installing Visual Studio 11 Beta. There are more details on this on the download page: www.microsoft.com/.../downloads.

• Anonymous
  February 29, 2012
  Although I'm excited about this release, I'm a little disappointed that some of the blocking issues I had with the developer preview still are not fixed in the VS 11 beta/win8 consumer preview. For example, where is WriteableBitmap.Render? I was hoping to be able to finally get started on an app that needed some form of WriteableBitmap.Render functionality, but that functionality appears to be completely missing. I can't make any kind of image composition apps using XAML without the ability to render XAML UI to an image. Right now the only option I have is to NOT implement the share charm, and let it "default" to take a screenshot (or I suppose I could make either an HTML app or a DirectX app - neither are ideal options). The strange thing is that the printing API lets me print directly from XAML, which I'm assuming requires some kind of rasterization (probably it uses an undocumented API).

• Anonymous
  February 29, 2012
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 29, 2012
  Looks like the Pro edition received code analysis and a profiler for C++ - that is the good. BUT, the new theme is AWFUL:

1. The worst thing are the tiny monochrome icons in Solution Explorer.  When I look at them it makes me want to cry because they all look very similar.  I want to emphasize that the problem with the new icons is not that they are gray (you could give each one a different color if you want).  The problem is that the icons consist of a single color.  Having multiple colors in an icon helps to make it recognizable.  Even the bigger icons in "New Project" window are jarring because they are a single color.
2. The lack of edges in the windows, tabs, etc., is confusing.
3. The docked window tabs read "SOLU...", "PERF...", "COD...", "TEA...", "TOO..." but they have no color icons! I don't like the Dark theme either.  I have every version of Visual Studio since VC++ 4.0.  I will continue to use the old versions until you fix the theme.  I'm sorry, but I won't use the beta version with this confusing flat gray theme.  I already paid for my MSDN renewal, now I will wait for you to fix the problem.

• Anonymous
  March 01, 2012
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 02, 2012
  ok

• Anonymous
  March 02, 2012
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 02, 2012
  Worse then 2010. Crash, Performance issues, Ugly UI. Just when I thought it couldn't get worse it did. VS's only accomplishment: the degree by which you managed to lower users expectations.

• Anonymous
  March 04, 2012
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 04, 2012
  Dave, I'm sorry to hear you've had such a negative experience.  Can you provide more details on what are your specific concerns / what are the exact problems you've run into?  Thanks.

• Anonymous
  March 06, 2012
  I have to agree, the new theme is dreadful. The Developer Preview was really good, why spoil it? As well as the new features in VS we also need a top flight front-end web editor to work both independently and alongside VS. Expression Web can and should be that editor but needs urgent update for the mobile space.

• Anonymous
  March 06, 2012
  Of all the improvements made in VS 11 I have to say that I am most satisfied with the color coding in the code editor window. It gives a .NET look to the code (which I hated until I actually began coding in C#).  My only complaint would be the load time but with the amount of functionality in Visual Studio it is to be expected to some degree.  Very happy...

• Anonymous
  March 06, 2012
  Please fire the designers that have drawn the new theme ... it's absolutely horrible

• Anonymous
  March 07, 2012
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 08, 2012
  It would be great if the team can add a new "Application Look" menu so we can switch between the 'new' gray scale theme (Retro) to several other themes, ie Vintage(for Visual Studio 6), Whidbey for VS2005/2008 and the theme of VS2010. I have already seen it in several samples of the CJ & BCG toolkit. Thinking big in gray scale doesn't make any sense.

• Anonymous
  March 08, 2012
  @Marcello F.  The next thing Microsoft will say that it doesn't support BCG anymore.  Would not surprise me one bit

• Anonymous
  March 11, 2012
  I downloaded it and gave it a try but have decided that unless the UI and colour scheme is substantially improved [to be similar to 2010] it's unusable and I'll be skipping this version or going to another development platform. I've suffered enough with Expression Blend over the last few years and was glad that was a brief thing only when needed, I'm simply not going to put up with the poor usability in my primary development environment.  Unfortunately I've also renewed my MSDN a short while ago, but I'm already considering cancelling it if I don't hear of an improvement and I'll renew again if I return to the platform.

• Anonymous
  March 12, 2012
  @Stephen I left a comment it didn't post through if you have an email let me know and I will forward it as it long ....

• Anonymous
  March 13, 2012
  Hi Dave- If you email your comment to stoub at microsoft, I can post it for you on your behalf.  You could also try again posting it yourself; I've noticed some folks having issues posting comments, and typically in those cases a second or third attempt will succeed.  Our blog platform folks are investigating.

• Anonymous
  April 09, 2012
  i am very happy with the new IDE, when will the final version will be released

• Anonymous
  April 10, 2012
  Mohamed, it's great to hear that you enjoy the updated IDE. We've not yet announced an RTM date for Visual Studio 11, but I fully expect Soma will share that information once it's available.

• Anonymous
  May 15, 2012
  Think of the benefit there would have been if you had talked about your UI changes before you just coded them all up and dropped them on us expecting us to be happy. It is a proven software methodology that communicating with your customers frequently leads to lower costs of development and happier customers.  Even if you don't give us XP support, if you TALK to us then you are managing expectations. Why why why why will you not talk about XP support?  Now you just ignore us!  This has been up in the air since the first preview 3/4 a year ago. How hard is it to COMMUNICATE a bit with your customers.  Let us know your plans so we can also make plans. Please please think about talking to us.  If you will not talk to us, will you please post why you choose to not tell us?  So that we can at least understand the decision? Silence is the worst you can do. Please, please, PLEASE stop the silence policy and tell us your plans!