Windows Presentation Foundation, .NET Framework 4 Serves as User Interface Base for Upcoming Beta of Visual Studio 2010

The user interface for Visual Studio 2010 will be based on Windows Presentation Foundation and .Net Framework 4.0 technologies. it will leverage WPF's capabilities for rich text display, multiple Windows support, and improved rendering of geometry. The user interface was shown at VSLive Conference in San Francisco.

Developers will find it easier to organize products and source code. Advanced editor extensions make it simpler to provide data; references are offered for navigating source code, and advanced graphics are enabled.

The new look and feel will be offered in the first beta version of Visual Studio 2010. The date for delivery of the beta or final release has not been announced. You can download the current community preview at Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 CTP on Connect.

Other features of the interface include HTML snippets for directly marking HTML code without having to switch to a different tool, and multi-monitor support, so you can see different data types on different monitors.

Among the announcements included the Visual Studio 2010 Team System application lifecycle management product. A testing tool codenamed "Camano" is planned offering test case management. Team System also would get historical debugging as part of the developer track of the product suite; this capability records debugging events while the application is running. Developers can go back and forth and watch steps.

Partnerships were also announced so developers can edit DB2 and Oracle schema from within Visual Studio.