I’ve have been waiting along time for Visual Studio 2008, because it adds functionality that should have been included a long time ago. I have pondered a while on what makes Visual Studio 2008 so special and what it would take me to upgrade. I came up with five good reasons I think I should upgrade to Visual Studio 2008.

1. Nested Master Pages

After working with the Community Server SDK, I’ve found out that Visual Studio 2005 comes up short. Visual Studio 2008 will support nested master pages right out of the box, which will come in handy.

Read More VS 2008 Nested Master Page Support

2. Multi-Targeting

With the past few releases of Visual Studio, each Visual Studio release only supported a specific version of the .NET Framework. For example, VS 2002 only worked with .NET 1.0, VS 2003 only worked with .NET 1.1, and VS 2005 only worked with .NET 2>.0.

One of the big changes we are making starting with the VS 2008 release is to support what we call “Multi-Targeting” - which means that Visual Studio will now support >targeting multiple versions of the .NET Framework, and developers will be able to start taking advantage of the new features Visual Studio provides without having to always upgrade their existing projects and deployed applications to use a new version of the .NET Framework library." VS 2008 Multi-Targeting Support

3. New version of VSTO

VSTO for Visual Studio 2005 is a pain if your trying to work with the ribbon. The documentation is crappy and one really has to search around for ever on how to place a button on a certain ribbon tab. The Ribbon Designer is going to be pretty sweet!

The Ribbon Designer, which includes a visual designer and an extensibility object model, makes it straightforward for developers to create, configure, and debug the Ribbon UI. As with other visual designers, you can drag and drop controls onto the design surface, set properties through the Properties window, and easily create event handlers for your new Ribbon items by double-clicking the control.

Read More VS 2008 Multi-New VSTO Features Help You Customize Word And Outlook

4. JavaScript Intellisense

Developers around the world who use JavaScript, will tell you that this is the best feature by far. I hardly ever use JavaScript, but when I do I am always complaining about how there is no Intellisense. Recently, I was told by a serious developer who writes JavaScript daily that the Intellisense is not the greatest. I’m sure that the team responsible for JavaScript Intellisense will get that all figured out in the near future.

Read More VS 2008 JavaScript Intellisense

5. Its New

We have all been waiting for a new release for a long time now. Visual Studio 2005 has served us good, but it is2008 and we need a new(and hopefully faster) IDE!

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