Eran Kampf
Eran Kampf
2 min read

Visual Studio "Orcas" Development Tools for .NET Framework 3.0

Microsoft Downloads page was just updated with the new Microsoft Visual Studio Code Name “Orcas” Development Tools for .NET Framework 3.0 RC1.
The download is available here.

From the readme:

Welcome to the release notes for the .NET Framework 3.0 RC1 synchronized release of the Microsoft Visual Studio Code Name “Orcas” Community Technology Preview – Development Tools for .NET Framework 3.0®!

This software package is not planned for final release or support. Most of the technology incorporated in this package will be included in the Code Name “Orcas” release of Visual Studio, and that is where it will reach final release quality, and will be supported as part of that released Visual Studio product. The full Code Name “Orcas” release of Visual Studio will contain additional .NET Framework 3.0 development technology. We are providing access to some of this .NET Framework 3.0 development technology early, so customers using Visual Studio 2005 have an improved development experience for .NET Framework 3.0 applications.

Included in this CTP release is the Windows Presentation Foundation visual designer (“Cider”) for Visual Studio. The Cider designer is very limited in capabilities in these early technology previews, but does work for very simple layout tasks, can serve as a preview for editing more complex WPF forms, and preserves XAML when moving between the XAML editor and the designer. More information about the Cider designer is on the Channel9 wiki, and questions can be directed to the WPF Designer (“Cider”) forum on MSDN.

If you have problems using this package or with Windows Presentation Foundation (“Avalon”) or Windows Communications Foundation (“Indigo”) development, please utilize the newsgroups and forums that are available to get help from the community, including Microsoft employees that participate in these newsgroups and forums:

Please note that this release only works with the Final release of Visual Studio 2005, and the RC1 release of the .NET Framework 3.0 runtime (which is included in Windows Vista RC1) and the RC1 release of the Windows SDK. Updating any of these without also updating this package will cause problems.