Team Foundation Server On Track

Once Team Foundation Server is out the door, Microsoft’s Visual Studio group will head back to the drawing board to begin firming up plans for the next iteration of Visual Studio, code-named “Orcas.”

“Hopefully, over the next two months or so, we’ll be able to finish our planning and start making a road map,” said S. Somasegar, vice president of Microsoft’s developer division.

The group also is studying which role-based customizations of Visual Studio it will tackle next. The November Visual Studio 2005 release shipped with four roles, offering distinct versions for project managers, software architects, software developers and testers. Tailored versions for higher-level roles such as business analysts and application administrators are in the cards. Which one will take priority is still being decided, according to Rick LaPlante, general manager of Visual Studio Team System.

Also in the works from Microsoft’s developer tools team is Atlas, Microsoft’s AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML) tools framework. Now available in embryonic form as a “community technology preview,” Atlas will initially be released as a plug-in for Visual Studio, Somasegar said. Microsoft plans to incorporate native support for Atlas into its Orcas release.

Somasegar said the company will ship a standards-based client for those who worry about compliance. “As you go up the stack to the higher end where we have the Windows Presentation Foundation, then, hey, if you want a rich-client application, a smart-client application, then we have that support as well. But guess what? That’s a Windows-specific thing,” he said.

Atlas will be among the technologies showcased at Microsoft’s Mix conference later this month in Las Vegas.

The new show, which overlaps with the big EclipseCon conference in San Jose, Calif., will be the first by Microsoft to spotlight its consumer Web technologies, including the nascent Expression development tools for designers. That line will launch with three software packages—Graphic Designer, Interactive Designer and Web Designer—the first two of which are currently available as preview releases.