March CTP of Orcas Has Arrived

A short while back, I blogged about the great new features in Orcas that ASP.NET developers will enjoy thanks to the incorporation of the Expression Web designer into Visual Studio. At that time, these features were set to debut in the February CTP version of Orcas which was slated to release in March. In our great wisdom, we've renamed that CTP to the March CTP, and you can get it right now by visiting the Microsoft download site.

I should clarify that statement. You can start downloading it right now, but because it comes in a set of many very large files, you'll be downloading for a very long time. So go ahead, kick off your download, run off and have lunch, dinner, a little nap, a good night's sleep, and you'll be about halfway to experiencing the next evolution in ASP.NET development. (Yeah, there's plenty for you old-school Windows developers, too!)

Speaking of ASP.NET, you should know that Orcas uses version 2.0 of ASP.NET. We aren't shipping a new version of ASP.NET with the next version of Visual Studio, so don't worry about going through those growing pains all over again.

Incidentally, I am working on a book right now that will focus on teaching the ins and outs of the new designer in Orcas. It will be targeted primarily at web designers who aren't interested in getting deep into ASP.NET. Even so, the book will walk you through the development of an ASP.NET application from start to finish in order to delve into all of the great new features that Orcas brings to web design. If you want to keep up to date with my book, check out my public web site.