Silverlight™ Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1

Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 is available for download from Microsoft Download Center

This package is an add-on for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 to provide tooling for Microsoft Silverlight 2.
It can be installed on top of either Visual Studio 2008 SP1 or Visual Web Developer 2008 Express with SP1, and it provides a Silverlight project system for developing Silverlight applications using C# or Visual Basic.

This download will install the following:

• Silverlight 2 developer runtime
• Silverlight 2 software development kit
• KB956453 for Visual Studio 2008 SP1
  and/or
  KB956485 for Visual Web Developer 2008 Express with SP1
• Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1
  and/or
  Silverlight Tools for Visual Web Developer 2008 Express with SP1

Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 includes:

• Visual Basic and C# Project templates
• Intellisense and code generators for XAML
• XAML design preview
• Debugging of Silverlight applications
• Remote debugging of Silverlight applications for Mac
• Web reference support
• WCF Templates
• Team Build and command line build support
• Integration with Expression Blend

VSTS 2008 SP1 and IE8 ...

IE8 is coming up soon as Beta 2 is already out in the open, and one of the major changes in IE8 - I actually just came across it by chance - is that IE8 opens up to 6 concurrent connections per host compared to only 2 in IE7.

That leads to the question of Does VSTS support IE8? Will it really open the 6 connections per host?

Well luckly the answer to both questions are YES ...

• VSTS 2008 SP1 has the IE8 Option in the Browser Mix
• By testing IE8 in the load test, it worked :)
  It opened 6 concurrent connections per host.
  The test was created by having a load test with one web test in it, and one concurrent user, once ran against IE7 and another run against IE8.

Team System Web Access 2008 SP1 Power Tool Released

A new release of the Team System Web Access Power Tools have been released on Microsoft Donwload Center.

New With Service Pack 1

• Work item only view for users without a client access license. [Previously known as Work Item Web Access (WIWA) feature]
• Run a single instance with multiple languages (CHS, CHT, DEU, ENU, ESN, FRA, ITA, JPN, KOR, RUS).
• Create work items with initial values by using a URL.
• Share ad-hoc work item queries by using a URL.
• Find and view Shelvesets.
• Improved work item search syntax.

Features in Team System Web Access

• Direct links to work items, query results, diffs, changesets and more.
• Display custom controls on work item forms.
• View queued or completed builds, queue or stop builds.
• Add new work items or edit existing ones.
• Work with any type of work item, including custom ones.
• Add new work item queries or edit existing ones.
• View, download, upload, check-in and check-out documents on SharePoint team portal.
• View reports, export as PDF or Excel.
• Browse items in version control, download source files, view changesets, diffs, history, and annotated views.
• Search for keywords in work items.