A new ISAPI filter enables you to deploy Team Foundation Server more easily in environments where Internet users need access to Team Foundation Server without using a VPN connection. For more information about basic and digest authentication support, see Team Foundation Server, Basic Authentication, and Digest Authentication.

You can now embed custom controls on your work item forms. You can persist custom control data in work item type fields, or elsewhere. For more information about custom controls, see "Work Item Tracking Custom Controls" in the Visual Studio 2005 SDK.

Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server only provides summary data on merge history. This makes it difficult to build any sophisticated change tracking tools that track the flow of changes through branches. This service pack includes a new Web service method and object model API that provides detailed merge history data. The new API is named QueryMergesWithDetails and is available on the SourceControl object. For more information about detailed merge history, see "Merge History" in the Visual Studio 2005 SDK.

You can now increase the capacity and performance of your Team Foundation Server database tier by moving the SQL Server Analysis Services database to a separate server. After you move the database, the data tier is composed of two computers: the relational data-tier server, and the analysis services data-tier server. For more information about how to move the data warehouse, see How to: Move the Data Warehouse SQL Server Analysis Services Database to a Separate Server.

Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Settings

Exporting and Importing Settings

Task List

Error List

Brief and Emacs Shortcut Keys

Window Layout Management

This release includes improved visual feedback for window docking. As you drag a tool window across a frame where it can be docked, a guide diamond appears. The four arrows of the diamond point toward the edges of the enclosing frame. Whenever the window you are dragging reaches a position where it can be docked, the arrow that points toward the edge where it can be fastened darkens.

Figure 1: Guide Diamond used to dock windows

If the window can join a tabbed group, the center of the diamond darkens. To dock the window, release the mouse. The guide diamond makes it much easier to put your active windows just where you want them. For more information, see How to: Arrange and Dock Windows.

IDE Navigator

Visual Studio now includes a way to switch between open windows and files available in the IDE, similar to the ALT + TAB feature in Windows.

Figure 2: IDE Navigator

The Window.NextDocumentWindowNav command can be mapped to a keyboard shortcut to let you move among open files in the editor or open tool windows. Depending on the settings that you use, Window.NextDocumentWindowNav might be automatically mapped to CTRL + TAB. For more information, see How to: Navigate Within the Integrated Development Environment.

The Start Page has been redesigned for this release. The new Start Page consists of a single page with four separate information areas: Open an Existing Project, Getting Started, Headlines, and News. To display the Start Page, on the View menu, click Start Page.

As in earlier versions, you can open recently modified projects, quickly create projects, or view certain Help topics. You can now also access product and event information from Microsoft, and also RSS feeds from Visual Studio. For more information, see Start Page.

This release makes it even easier to access resources in the developer community. A new menu, which is named Community, appears in the IDE. From this menu, you can post questions to MSDN newsgroups, send product feedback to Microsoft, access useful Web sites, and search online for components to use in your applications. For more information, see Interacting with Other Developers.

You can also create and share custom project templates, code snippets, starter kits, and other items with the developer community. For more information, see Working with Community Components.

The following features are available in this release:

• Code Snippets   Visual Studio now provides segments of sample code ready to insert into Visual Basic, Visual C#, or Visual J# projects. To display a list of available code snippets, right-click the active document in the Code Editor and then click Insert Snippet on the shortcut menu. Click the name of the snippet you want, and the code is inserted into the editor, ready for you to modify as needed. To manage the folders in which you store code snippets and to add new snippets, click Code Snippet Manager on the Tools menu. For more information, see How to: Manage Code Snippets.

  Figure 1: Inserting snippets in Visual Basic code

  

• Smart tags   Similar to Office smart tags, Visual Studio smart tags make common tasks available that apply to the context of your work. For example, using smart tags you can now correct some common errors in Visual Basic with a click of a button.

• Refactoring   You can now use tools to update the internal structure of your Visual C# and Visual Basic code, a process called refactoring. Available refactoring options include rename, extract method, extract interface, change signature, and encapsulate field. For more information on C# refactoring, see Refactoring. For more information on Visual Basic refactoring, see Refactoring and Rename Dialog Box (Visual Basic).

• Track Changes   You can see where you have edited a file in the current IDE session. Edits are identified by a visual indicator in the margin. Lines that have been edited or lines adjacent to deleted lines are marked. When the margin is highlighted yellow, this means that the line was edited and the file has yet to be saved. If the margin is highlighted green, it means that you have saved the file since the line was edited. You can customize the highlight color in the Options dialog box by updating Track Changes before save in Display items on the Fonts and Colors page. You can turn this option off by clearing Track Changes on the General tab of the Text Editor page in the Options dialog box.

• Bookmark window   This tool window enables you to manage and control your bookmarks. You can put related bookmarks in folders, name them, and re-order them as you see fit.

• AutoRecover   This feature automatically saves files that contain changes every five minutes. If the IDE shuts down unexpectedly, files with changes are available for recovery. You can customize the AutoRecover options in the Options dialog box. For more information, see AutoRecover, Environment, Options Dialog Box.

• Document Outline window   The Document Outline window now supports outline views for Windows Forms in addition to ASP.NET Web pages and HTML pages. You can use the Document Outline window to navigate among the controls on Windows Forms while in Design view of the editor. To access this window, on the View menu, point to Other Windows and then click Document Outline.

Visual Studio features a new Web page designer that includes many enhancements for creating and editing ASP.NET Web pages and HTML pages. It provides a simpler, faster way to create Web Forms pages than in Visual Studio .NET 2003.

Visual Web Developer features improvements in all areas of Web site development. You can create and maintain Web sites in local folders, as in Internet Information Services (IIS) applications, or across a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) connection. The Visual Web Developer designer supports all ASP.NET enhancements, including nearly two dozen new controls that simplify many Web development tasks.

Design view of the HTML designer includes many improvements that support new ASP.NET features or enhance the WYSIWYG Web page design experience. Task-based editing using smart tags guides you through performing the most common procedures with controls, such as data binding and formatting. You can edit the new ASP.NET master pages visually. Template editing has been improved to make it easier to work with data controls as well as new controls such as the Login control. Editing HTML tables for layout or to display columnar information is now easier and more intuitive.

Visual Web Developer produces XHTML 1.1 markup by default. At the same time, you can select from a list of schemas that help you produce markup to match the abilities of different browsers or standards. HTML validation points out markup that does not conform to the selected schema.

The HTML editor also provides options to allow you to precisely control the format of all HTML and of ASP.NET markup. Formatting is preserved exactly when you switch views.

You can easily move around your documents with the new tag navigator that shows you where you are in the current hierarchy. Using the tag outline feature, you can collapse sections of the document, such as large tables.

Figure 2: Tag navigator in the Web Page Designer

For programming, the code editor provides better productivity with enhanced IntelliSense. Visual Web Developer supports both ASP.NET models for writing the code for an ASP.NET Web page, including the single-file page model and the improved code-behind model. You can reference components automatically by simply adding them to a folder in your site. Data binding is substantially easier, and in many cases requires no code at all. At the same time, you can easily access data in databases, XML files, or business objects. For more information, see What's New in Web Development for Visual Studio.

A new XML editor is available in this release of Visual Studio. This editor takes advantage of the power of the System.Xml and System.Xml.Xsl classes in the .NET Framework and conforms with XML standards. Some of the features included are:

• Full XML 1.0 syntax checking    XML and DTD syntax errors are reported while you type, and detailed descriptions appear in the Error List Window.

• Validation   Many XML editors require that you manually check for XSD, DTD, or XDR validation errors. The Visual Studio XML editor uses a validation engine that can perform XSD or DTD validation while you type.

• Code snippets   The XML editor adds dynamically generated code snippets based on your XML schemas. Press the TAB key after the element name to automatically populate the required attributes and child content. Many useful XML snippets are also provided, including a snippet for building new code snippets.

• Flexible schema association   The editor searches for XML schemas and automatically associates them with your document. The editor can find schemas in a schema cache directory and in your project, or by using schemaLocation attributes or user-specified locations.

• XSD-based IntelliSense   All IntelliSense is based on your XML schemas and the editor provides accurate IntelliSense with full support for XSD.

• Auto-insertion   The editor inserts attribute quotes and end tags automatically, as well as required namespace and xsi:type attributes.

• Auto-formatting   The editor supports the Format Selection feature, available on the Advanced submenu of the Edit menu, to auto-format when you type the closing tag or paste from the Clipboard. This feature also auto-formats code snippets.

• Configurable text colors   The editor includes several customizable color options for text in the Fonts and Colors, Environment, Options Dialog Box that are separate from HTML color options so you can customize the XML colors differently.

• Create XML schema   The editor can infer a schema from existing XML documents, which makes XSD schema design much easier. The editor can also convert your DTD or XDR schemas to XSD.

• Editing XSL   Additional features and color-coding for XSL keywords are available when you edit XSL. In addition, a two-pass validation algorithm is applied to ensure better XSD validation and IntelliSense with the XSLT style sheets.

• Secure XSL transformations   The Show XSL Output feature enables you to perform your XSL transformations securely with a single button click so you can preview the results. The editor supports writing HTML to a Web browser window and XML and text output to another code editor.

• Debugging XSL   The XSL debugger is new to Visual Studio and is built on the IL generating XslCompiledTransform class provided in the .NET Framework. You can now step from your C# or Visual Basic applications directly into your XSLT transforms. The XSL debugger is based on the CLR debugger; it enables you to do all the things you can normally do with a debugger, including evaluating XPath expressions in the Watch window.

For more information, see XML Editor.

The Microsoft Build Engine (MSBuild) is the new build platform for Microsoft and Visual Studio. MSBuild introduces a new XML-based project file format that is simple to understand, easy to extend, and fully supported by Microsoft. The MSBuild project file format enables developers to fully describe what items need to be built as well as how they need to be built with different platforms and configurations. In addition, the project file format enables developers to author re-usable rules that can be factored into separate files so that builds can be done consistently across different projects within their product. The MSBuild build process is defined by atomic units of build, called tasks. You can author your own tasks in any .NET language in order to extend the build process. Visual Studio projects are now stored in the MSBuild project file format, providing the ability to customize the Visual Studio build process. MSBuild is completely transparent with regards to how it processes and builds software, enabling developers to build projects on computers without Visual Studio. For more information, see MSBuild.

• Class Designer   Class Designer allows you to visualize systems and applications. While you design class types, members, and methods, Class Designer generates the corresponding source code.

• Object Test Bench   As you code, you can use Object Test Bench to quickly test your .NET Framework or Visual J# applications.

Note
These features are not available in Express Editions.

For more information, see Designing and Viewing Classes and Types and Object Test Bench.

• ClickOnce Deployment ClickOnce deployment allows you to deploy self-updating Windows applications that can be installed and run as easily as Web applications. You can deploy Windows client and Command Line applications. There is a new Publish Project command on the Project menus. For more information, see ClickOnce Deployment.

• Bootstrapping Prerequisites   You can now include required system components, such as the .NET Framework runtime, as a part of a deployment project or ClickOnce deployment. For more information, see Deploying Prerequisites.

• Windows Installer Deployment   Improvements to Setup and Deployment projects include the ability to choose between per-user or per-machine installation, support for 64-bit deployment, and deployment to Web Servers that host multiple Web sites.

For more information, see What's New in Deployment.

You can now choose to incorporate MSDN Online, Codezone Community, and Questions content into your Help experience. MSDN Online has the latest product documentation, including quarterly updates. Codezone Community content includes articles, samples, and other information located on select third-party Web sites, such as GotDotNet. Questions content posts from online forums.

The first time you attempt to access Help, a dialog box appears requesting that you specify your help source preferences. You can change your online Help preference at any time from the Online, Help, Environment, Options Dialog Box. You can choose to display F1 topics located on MSDN Online and perform searches on Help content located on your computer as well as the Web. For search, results are grouped by the source of the topic: Local Help, MSDN Online, Codezone Community, and Questions. Only one set of results can be viewed at a time. You can switch among the different sources' results by selecting a source on the right of your search results.