Visual Studio Shell and Visual Studio 2008

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Today at Tech Ed in the US, we announced that we will be making the Visual Studio Shell available for ISV's and developers to build on in the Orcas timeframe.  This is great news and means that in cases where you would normally build out your own IDE, you will now be able to take the Visual Studio Shell and add the features and components you need to make your own IDE.  Customers will get the same look and feel they are used to with Visual Studio reducing the time taken for them to get their heads around the solution.

The other announcement is that Visual Studio "Orcas" will be called Visual Studio 2008.  That doesn't say anything about the release of VS 2008 - only that it will be released in the FY08 financial year (as the naming convention is normally managed). 

The Shell component will be widely available with the launch of Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 due later this US summer.