Microsoft: Visual Studio Orcas still on track for 2007

Microsoft has yet to post a beta build of Visual Studio "Orcas." But the product is still slated to ship in 2007, according to Scott Guthrie, General Manager of Microsoft's Developer Division.

Guthrie confirmed the 2007 release-date target for Orcas in a blog posting on February 8. He said Microsoft is planning to release the February Community Technology Preview (CTP) test build "in a few weeks," and the first public beta "later this spring."

In a PowerPoint presentation accompanying his post, Guthrie mentions that a Go-Live license for Orcas will be available in the "summer timeframe" and that the final release is still "targeted to ship later this year."

Microsoft officials have been careful not to go on record with a ship target for Orcas. Sources close to the company recently said privately that the next version of Microsoft's tool suite was slated for late 2007 or early 2008.

The Orcas code name refers to both Visual Studio and the updated version of the .Net Framework (release 3.5) that is part of the product.

Microsoft is playing up the Web-development capabilities of Orcas, among them, HTML and CSS designer enhancements, including support for the same WYSIWYG designer as in the Microsoft Expression design tools; built-in Ajax support; enhanced JavaScript support; richer data query and manipulation functionality via Language Integrated Query (LINQ); and multitargeting (the ability to target multiple versions of the .Net Framework when developing an application).