Visual Studio 11 and Team Foundation Server 11 Betas are available

Last Wednesday (Leap Day 2012), Microsoft made Visual Studio 11 and Team Foundation Server 11 betas available for download. This new version includes a number of new ALM features such as Code Reviews, Agile Project Management Tools, IntelliTrace in production, Unit Test multi-framework support, and many others.

Use download links below to begin taking advantage of the new version. These betas have a go-live license and will have a supported upgrade path to RTM. In addition the new version can be installed and run side by side with previous versions of Visual Studio. The VS 11 Beta can even open existing VS 2010 SP1 solutions without upgrading the solutions allowing other developers with VS 2010 SP1 to continue to work in the same solution. See Visual Studio 11 Compatibility for more details. View Product Highlights for Visual Studio 11 Beta for more details on everything that is included.

Downloads are available here:

• Visual Studio 11 and Team Foundation Server Betas – This link provides downloads the Visual Studio 11, TFS 11, and Express beta downloads.
• Windows 8 Consumer Preview – Not required for any of the VS 11 projects but includes the new and innovative Metro UI.

In addition to the Beta downloads. There was also a number of resources that also launched the same day to show you how to leverage all of the features in Visual Studio ALM 11.

• Visual Studio ALM Rangers Readiness Beta “Wave” of Projects – The VS ALM Rangers, that I am a part of, released number of VS ALM Rangers Projects focused real world guidance that include the VS 11 and TFS 11 enhancements.
• Visual Studio 11 Application Lifecycle Management Virtual Machine and Hands-on-Labs / Demo Scripts – For those of you that want to try TFS without having to install it, this VM is a great resource to try out the features in a sandbox. The VM includes 6 Hands on Labs for several of the new features and includes all of the data to support them.

I have already started using the VS 11 beta for several projects and the new experience and features are great (I did switch the color theme to “Dark”).Mike