It has been a little over a week since we released Beta 2 of VS 2008 and .NET 3.5. So far the feedback from people using it has been really great. I've received a lot of emails from people saying it is the best beta we've ever shipped, and several who have moved over to using it full time for all development.
I have also helped people with a few gotchas that they have run into (mainly around setup / installation). Below are some notes on the issues I've seen as well as how to fix them:
Setup / Installation Issues
Control Toolbox is Empty: We've seen several people run into a situation where when they create a new ASP.NET Web-site or Web-application with VS 2008 they find that the Control Toolbox is empty, and no intellisense is provided in source-view. This problem indicates that the .NET 3.5 version of System.Web.dll did not get installed correctly due to interference with some of the .NET Framework Hotfixes already on the machine. This blog post describes how to fix this issue.
JavaScript Intellisense and Colorization Not Enabled: We've seen some people run into a situation where JavaScript code colorization and intellisense isn't enabled due to a registry setting not getting configured correctly during setup. This blog post describes how to fix this issue.
Setup Asks for Windows XP SP2 on Windows Vista: We've seen a few people run into issues on Windows Vista where either VS 2008 or .NET Framework 3.5 Beta2 prompts users with an error message asking them to install Windows XP SP2 (even though they are running Vista!). This blog post describes how to work around this issue.
DevEnv /resetsettings: If you have ever installed a previous version of "Orcas" or VS 2008 on your machine (either Beta1 or one of the CTP versions), you need to reset your VS 2008 settings after installing Beta2. If you don't do this, you'll have an odd set of settings configured (some windows will be in the wrong place), and you'll potentially see some IDE performance slowness. You can reset your settings by typing "DevEnv /resetsettings" on the command-line against the VS 2008 version of the IDE. I cover how to-do this in my Beta 2 Release Blog Post.
.NET 3.5 Web Sites and LINQ to SQL in Partial Trust: The default trust policy for the LINQ and LINQ to SQL assemblies, as well as the web.config file for .NET 3.5 ASP.NET web-sites do not allow applications to be run in medium trust environments. This can impact you if you deploy your application to a remote hoster. This blog post describes how to enable this in Beta2 (you won't need to take these steps for the final release).
ASP.NET AJAX Multi-Targeting
DisableAjaxPolicy.exe: As I mentioned in my initial Beta 2 Release Blog Post, we discovered a side-by-side issue with ASP.NET AJAX right before we shipped Beta 2. You'll want to make sure you run the DisableAjaxPolicy script after installing VS 2008 to fix this (it only takes a few seconds to run).
Multi-Targeting ASP.NET AJAX with VS 2008: You can use Visual Studio 2008 to build ASP.NET AJAX applications using both .NET 2.0 and ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 and .NET 3.5 using ASP.NET AJAX 3.5. I talked about how this works in my ASP.NET AJAX in .NET 3.5 and VS 2008 blog post. Because of the DisableAjaxPolicy patch above, targeting ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 applications using VS 2008 doesn't work as smoothly as we'd like in Beta 2. This Using VS 2008 to Target ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 blog post discusses the best way to enable this in Beta 2.
Online Forums
Here are some pointers to on-line forums where you can ask questions or get help:
To report bugs you find, please visit http://connect.microsoft.com/. Alternatively, you can send me email and I will forward them to the right team.
Thanks,
Scott