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As we begin the Course here let me take you through a real quick history of Visual Studio, just kind of so you know where it's been. Some people like this, some people don't, so if this is not your deal then just kind of skip this video. But a lot of folk need to kind of understand where it came from and this can also help you just feel a little more knowledgeable out there in the sometimes intimidating world of development. All of this really got going really strongly around 1997. This is when Visual Studio was first released and keep in mind it didn't look a whole like it does right now. The layout was kind of similar, but man, the functionality was just drastically different. This used, or gave us access, to Visual Basic 5, and Visual C++. Also included there was Visual FoxPro. Now, Visual FoxPro was one of those platforms that if you talk to somebody now who's doing database development and they've been doing it for a while they will still tell you about the good old days of Visual FoxPro and how cool Visual FoxPro was. Now, there was another tool called Visual InterDev and this was supposed to help us design web pages and web applications. I remember working in this. It was very clunky. It was cool, but it was just very clunky. And then the Visual J Plus Plus. Now, this targeted Java development for the Java Runtime. This got included in the lawsuit and stuff between Sun Microsystems and Microsoft a little later, but anyway, in 1997 Visual Studio, this was when they tried to create the first single Integrated Development Environment for all languages. Now, what was interesting was you opened one program to develop but based on the language you opened you had a total different environment, so even though it kind of was one environment, it really wasn't. Then in 1998 we got Visual Studio 6.0. Things got to get a lot better around this time. This was the last edition to run on the Windows 9, the 95, 98 platform, all that stuff. We were running Visual Basic 6.0, Visual C++ 6.0, and Visual FoxPro 6.0. Now, InterDev and Visual J Plus Plus got kicked out into a separate Integrated Development Environment, and this is the first hint of what we're actually dealing with right now, on a major basis, and that is development was changing. The Internet and web applications and the needs there began to really separate the whole world of computers from the old Desktop environment, and this is the first hint we see of it. InterDev, of course, is that web application development tool; Visual J Plus Plus is Microsoft's implementation of a language for Java that would run on the Java Runtime platform; and these were obviously targeted toward the Internet, and toward the web. In 1998 Visual Studio 6.0 marked the last edition to include Visual FoxPro. Now this was a scandalous deal and it really irritated a bunch of database developers, but Microsoft basically stopped supporting FoxPro over the next few months, and then it was also the last edition to include Visual J Plus Plus because of the lawsuit between Sun Microsystems and Microsoft, which basically said that Microsoft would no longer do any kind of programming to target the Java Runtime environment. Then, around 2002, or in 2002, we start to see the code name Rainier, which was released, and this was the first version of Visual Studio .NET; it's the first version of development based on their .NET Framework. It required the NT-based platform. Now you may not even know what that is now, if you're kind of new to this, but this was the change from the old Windows 95-98 platform. This is the first jump up to Windows 2000, Windows XP, and all that sort of thing. It introduced C Sharp, a new language, and it upgraded VB to VB.NET, a painful process for a lot of the old VB 6er's and it introduced J Sharp, which is a C-based type program that mimics Java, but it's targeted only for the .NET Framework. It does not target the Java Runtime. Then in 2003, the Everett Code Name project brought us the Visual Studio .NET 2003. It actually came out in April. This was really considered a minor upgrade. There were some improvements in the Integrated Development Environment; it targeted the upgraded .NET Framework 1.1, the Framework came out at 1.0 in the original Visual Studio product. Now this was the first edition to support mobile device development. It did it in ASP.NET, and in the Compac CE, and this is another kind of tell-tale sign of where we're heading here in the progress down through the time line, and that is mobile devices, web-Internet type stuff. In 2005 we got the Whidbey Project that produced Visual Studio 2005 that was actually released in October of 2005. This is kind of interesting. Microsoft dropped the .NET from the name and you won't see Visual Studio. Notice we're talking in this Course about Visual Studio 2008, not Visual Studio .NET 2008. It's kind of interesting. They got the .NET out there, they established the brand through their marketing and then dropped the name. It targets the Framework 2.0, Service Pack 1 came out in June 2007, and this provided the Vista compatibility and there are a lot of cool things that were included there. The Framework 3.0 came out and Service Pack 1 supported that. The ASP.NET Web Services project type got added in 2005 which increased the functionality and the programmability of some of the Web Services stuff, and it actually took on more of a service-oriented architecture at that development environment. 2005 also included a local web server built into the IDE, so you didn't have to have a separate IIS web server running to take care of your web development, which was really cool. And then of course that brings us up to 2008, which was called Orcas. It came out in 07 November. It was a major upgrade. It targets the new Framework 3.5, the developer can actually choose which Framework they want to target as they're developing. This focuses on development on the Vista platform, Office 2007, web apps Ð we're going to talk a lot about that in this Course. J Sharp has been dropped now. It's not included. This also has your local web server, and then, just kind of want to throw something at you, Service Pack 2001, by the way, came out in August 2008, but in 2010, the 2010 version called Hawaii will be coming out within the next couple of years, and this offers better monitor support, multi-monitor support; it'll target Windows 7 Desktop; and it's going to give you a lot more support for SharePoint, and so SharePoint developers pay close attention to this. The Framework's going to be upgraded to 4.0 and notice your VHD can be downloaded right now, so you can go to Microsoft's website, do a search for the Visual Studio 2010 VHD. You can download this and play with it in Virtual PC. So, this is the community Technology Previous version, or Pre-release, whatever you call that thing. So, anyway, there will be a lot of changes to it but you can get a look at how it's going to look and feel. So anyway, that's a history of Visual Studio. I hope this helps you kind of get oriented on where you are, but that's how we've kind of evolved through here. Now let's dig into Visual Studio 2008 and see what we can learn.