Today, the Windows and Windows Server teams announced that Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 have been released to manufacturing. In keeping with our goal of delivering great tools on the same cadence as our platforms, I’m thrilled to announce that we have completed final builds of Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5.
This has been an exciting road for all of us involved in these projects, and we’re glad to be able to deliver these to our customers.
For MSDN Subscribers, the bits will be available for download on August 15th. Visual Studio Professional, Premium, Test Professional, and Ultimate with MSDN Subscribers can also sign up for a free, one year developer account for Windows Store today, with Windows Phone developer accounts coming soon.
We’re also planning an exciting launch event on September 12th, so mark your calendars, and visit http://visualstudiolaunch.com for more details.
Thank you to all of you that have taken the time to try the Visual Studio 2012 Developer Preview, Beta, and Release Candidate releases. Your feedback has been very helpful.
Namaste!
Wow! looks good. eager to try this one. can't wait. π
You did it! Can't wait for the bits to get my Metro app done…
WOW THAT LOOKS AMAZING!!!! AAAAAAAA I DON'T KNOW WHY I'M SHOULTING AT YOU GUYS NOW BUT SEAMS THAT THIS IS THE NEW WAY TO TALK!!!!!!!
What about MSDN availability?
I believe this, and Windows 8, will be available on MSDN on August 15.
Be aware of what you are getting into when you install Visual Studio 2012. It requires .NET 4.5.
If you still plan to develop for .NET 4.0 then there are serious drawbacks that Microsoft is not advertising.
.NET 4.5 assumes that the developer is happy to have .NET 4.0 bugs fixed when developing "Targeting .NET 4.0" (with .NET 4.5 installed).
This means that developers will not see .NET 4.0 bugs once they have .NET 4.5 installed. But once you run on a machine that does not (or cannot) have .NET 4.5 installed on it, those bugs will be present again. (Basically they are hidden while you debug but show up once you release.)
However, if you donβt have any .NET 4.0 users, then .NET 4.5 is a safe upgrade.
See here for more info: social.msdn.microsoft.com/…/c05a8c02-de67-47a9-b4ed-fd8b622a7e4a
awesome luk
I LOVE IT
I've already started some new projects on Visual Studio 2012! Can't wait to start developing on its final release π
Congratulations for all the hard work! We're very excited to use all the new tools and improvements!
Thank you.
When can I download it ?
How can we obtain the Registration Code for the Windows Store registration process for us that own MSDN subscription?
Thanks.
Great news! π
RC looks very good. Looking forward to getting this final release.
Good job, guys!
@ Veli Deli, as stated in the article VS 2012 will be available to MSDN subscribers on Aug 15, 2012.
If it is RTMed today, why does it take 15 days to put the bits on MSDN Subscriptions? Curious minds would like to know :).
Thats a news that the community was waiting for… Hurray!!!!
Will the RTM of TFS also be available on August 15th?
Hi Ry,
Yes – TFS will also be available on August 15th.
-somasegar
Great news!
Great great news. Hardly wait to try everything.
looks like none of the tremendous feedbacks about the ugly and unusefull UI have been heard. I ' m already depressive thinking I will have to work with this sad greyish and quasi monochrome UI. I know there are tons of improvements in it …. but why soo much hate and disrespect against the ones who use this product.
I hope they changed the theme of it because RP is unusable, it hurts my eyes and takes me twice as much time to do simple things compared to Visual Studio 2010. It simply sucks UI wise.
Millions of us would like to know.
Yes – WPF is a part of .NET 4.5 and is supported.
-somasegar
Ah … The Developer accounts are not yet open for individuals (only for corporate entities)
RK, with the magnitude of all of these releases, we're dotting our i's and crossing our t's to ensure we have a good experience for customers. This includes upgrading our distribution systems to handle the expected onslaught of download traffic.
I guess what I really want to know is if Blend for Visual Studio will have full designer support for WPF 4.5 applications. I'm using VS 2012 RC and it's completely busted.
Stephen Toub… Because all these releases came as a surprise to Microsoft, right? It's not like you've known they were coming for many months. I guess you absolutely had to wait for RTM before you could start "upgrading your distribution systems" π
Good news… and some more to learn more…
Someone can let me know why we need to waiting until August 15th?
Good work! Looking forward to getting our hands on it.
Namaste Soma,
As your screenshot their is two themes available Dark and Light in Rc.
1. When I choose Dark Everything in background set to #000 Black.
2. When I set Light then project list (as your final screenshot) are come in Black #000 also. Is their any myth behind setting black also when user choose light themes.
I don't feel that Blue color for text foreground with black in bground is a good idea.
Thanks Visual studio team to ship a new version of their software. I hope people love to use it.
I'm another MSDN Subscriber failing to find additional details on how to "sign up for a free, one year developer account for Windows Store today". The enrollment process appears to require a discount code. If we missed the opportunity today we hope it will be repeated on the launch date.
Soma/All,
When is the app store going to open to individual users (MSDN subscribers or otherwise)? Any dates? I have finished my app and cannot wait to submit it to the appstore, apparently there are no windevcamps in Hong Kong (where i am based in), so I could never attend any session and got the app store registration token.
Thanks and Regards,
Rohit
The ui is still the broken one despite all our thousands of feedbacks?? π
Thank you!.
Just as I install the RC you announce the final build. Any ideas as to what time will it hit Dreamspark for Students?
So good for this event. Can't wait until it really releases π
Menu captions are still in uppercase. The UI is still in grayscale. .Net 4.5 is still an inplace upgrade without XP support. Yet you have the nerve to tell us that our feedback has been very helpful?
This looks really ugly π
Is this the final build we can install or will we need to re-install the released version?????
If you still plan to develop for .NET 4.0 then there are serious drawbacks that Microsoft is not advertising.
RC looks very good. Looking forward to getting this final release.
<a href="http://www.aworkzone.com">Aworkzone</a>
I could never attend any session and got the app store registration token.
The UI is still in grayscale.
[url=http://www.aworkzone.com]Enterprise[/url]
Looks very sad,
When will the express version be available to public?
Will the VS2012 RTM run on Vista?
Π° ΡΠΌΡΡΠ» ΡΡΠ°Π²ΠΈΡΡ Π½Π° Vista? ΠΏΠ΅ΡΠ΅Ρ ΠΎΠ΄ΠΈ Π½Π° Windows8 )))
The UI is horrible and anti-productive. I can't imagine working with this s..t 12-16 hours per day.
Thank you!
Having used 2012 early on I can't wait for the final release. For those of us who are adaptable the UI is not bad and the upgrades/features make for a way more productive environment than VS2010.
Congrats! The community previews have been outstanding.
it's a greate new for IT world
Can we develop our app of metro style on windows 7? :- )
Hi Muhammad Waqar,
The Express SKUs (the Express versions for Windows 8 and Web) will also be available on 8/15. The Express version for Windows Desktop and the Express version of Windows Phone will be available later in the fall.
-somasegar
And what about Expression Blend 5 for Metro apps and Silverlight 5 – also 15. of August?
Certainly this looks truly awesome.
Will Blend 5 work for WPF?
The YELLING MENU says 'I'm a toy trying to be hip.' As a professional developer who lives in this tool for hours every day I don't need to fight the UI.
Your users have spoken loudly, please fix this.
Will it be possible to develop .Net 4.5 applications using VS 2010 and do not see this horrible pocky UI every day?
What about intelisense support for text templates ? For now we must use extensions for this task, but they are poor.
From what I see on the screenshoot, our feedback was useless.
Microsoft releases another unusable product. Yipppeeee…
Same bugs, dreadful UI, poor performance, no rad and more spin. I guees the new slogn is "What Microsoft abyss do you want to fall into today."
I do not understand the congratulations on this blog, I used the RC and it is nothing to write home about it feels more like a BETA release then RTM. I am sicking with VS 2010 and XP at least the bugs, and there are a lot of them, are known.
I will give you congratulations when you issue a Visual Studio and .NET end of life given it is obvious you have no clue how to get this product stable.
Can't say I'm overly excited about this – can't believe the rabid fans leaving feedback that they are excited – they obviously haven't downloaded the RC or beta. Either that or they are N00bs who haven't used VS before and don't realise how much better the VS2010 UI is/was.
I've spent a bit of time with the RC now (mainly because of bugs in VS2010 which I hypothesise were created by installing the RC). I can't adapt to it at all, using the Solution Explorer is painful, like staring at porridge.
"Luckily" we are still on XP at work so can't install this abomination. I think MS would've been better off releasing an SP2 for 2010 composed of bug fixes and 4.5 support.
Very disheartened by the direction VS is going, after 2 decades of (more or less) gradual improvement. We don't need Gucci interfaces; we are developers, not brain dead hipsters. Jeez.
We are missing ScottGu…
Whats up with CAPS? its ugly and childish…
Suggestion to M$$$
Why dont you huys change all your main web menus into CAPS and see how it looks?
Again, CAPS in the menu is UGLY.
So still no answer as to whether Blend 5 supports WPF designer?
I am dissapointed that so many feedback was ignoreg. We have presended dtrong indication, but MS does not care about this. So they created Visual Stink
Alex & Martin- Some news about Blend should be coming soon. Thanks for your interest and patience.
Jeffrey: You can of course incorporate the design language into apps you build for Windows 7, but you need to be running Visual Studio on Windows 8 to use it to build Metro style apps for Windows 8.
Oleg: Using Visual Studio 2010, you can target .NET 4, not .NET 4.5 (e.g. you can't utilize new APIs introduced in .NET 4.5). When the apps you build actually run, if .NET 4.5 is installed on the target machine, they'll run using .NET 4.5.
Missing Scott Gu, whatever. Any manager that by design causes compatibility issues (like microsoft doesn't do this well enough on their own LOL) and pours resources into changing one of the few areas of Visual Studio that was marginally acceptable the UI doesn't deserve their job.
We would be better off if Microsoft didn't develop and just fixed bugs! Otherwise it is one step forward and 5 back. Don't kid yourself Microsoft product are so bad no one wants to upgrade so they do stupid stuff like .net 4.5 to try and force corporations into their newer technologies.
This is going to be an EPIC fail. Wait until service pack 25 when they back pedal then install VS 2012.
@KodiakMx, @Rohit Sharma, @K.Piette
There are a few questions about how MSDN subscribers access the developer account benefits for Windows Store and Windows Phone. Windows Store is available today for company registration – simply log into My Account at msdn.microsoft.com/…/manage. You'll see Windows Store developer account listed, with links to the registration code and the registration process. Windows Store individual account registration will become available later this fall, and Windows Phone developer accounts will be available later this month.
Please note that the Windows Store developer account benefit is not available for MSDN subscriptions that are provided through MPN subscriptions, BizSpark, Web Site Spark, and Not for Resale (NFR) subscriptions. Windows Phone developer accounts will not be available for MSDN subscriptions that are provided through MPN subscriptions, Web Site Spark, and Not for Resale (NFR) subscriptions.
kevinw: As outlined in blogs.msdn.com/…/a-look-ahead-at-the-visual-studio-11-product-lineup-and-platform-support.aspx, Visual Studio 2012 "leverages core capabilities that are only present in the latest versions of Windows" and as such "requires Windows 7 or higher to run." That's a statement about where Visual Studio itself runs, however, not about the platforms for which you can build apps using Visual Studio 2012. The "platform targeting support" section of that post outlines the latter.
Robert Iagar: I expect Visual Studio 2012 will be available on DreamSpark by the end of August.
What about apps that target .NET 3.5? Stephen noted that there are problems for .NET 4.0. Is it even worse for .NET 3.5 apps?
…and another thing.
The monochrome glyphs are useless. Especially on a dark background. They must all now have a white frame which means when you see a bunch of them together in a menu or on a tool bar they become indistinct blobs and lose all effectiveness at helping you find commands or distinguish items quickly. As such they become noise and make finding things even harder.
I'm fine with flat. I'm fine with sparse, but your UI must be driven by usability, not some dogma of design as this apparently was.
Kevin Burton: Stephen's comments are about .NET 4.5 being an in-place update for .NET 4, meaning that .NET 4.5 overwrites .NET 4 such that all .NET 4-based apps just running against the installed .NET 4.5. In contrast, .NET 4/4.5 install side-by-side with .NET 3.5, so you can have both .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.5 on the same machine, and .NET 3.5 apps will continue running against .NET 3.5.
I am impressed by the release and its features.
Will VS 2012 be available on Microsoft DreamSpark? π
Hi Kljuco,
Yes – VS 2012 will be available on DreamSpark before the end of August.
-somasegar
Great π Thnx π
What's the final build number going to be the same as Windows, 9200?
Awahr, the final build number for Visual Studio is 50727.01.
Is this the RTM version or did I miss something??
This blog entry blogs.msdn.com/…/visual-studio-dark-theme.aspx refer to an RTM version.
Anyway great job, when VS2012 Beta was released i was disappointed by new look and feel, but after working with VS2012 every day, it started getting better and the perf improvements are noticeable!
Max, yes, this is RTM.
A dreadful release. It crashed several times already in testing and the UI is miserable to look at. With all the opportunities for improvement in VS2010 I was hoping for something much better. Sorry this seem more like untested then complete.
When will VS 2012 be available to Select Plus customers?
When will the msdn documentation be available for Metro? Lots of "place holders" still.
David, most Select customers have subscriptions, so they'll get access via MSDN on 8/15.
Gee, basically force the Win8 GUI style on the developers. I predict Win8 and Visual Studio 2012 are going to be Windows ME (if not Bob) all over again. I've been doing this since Windows 286, and been doing Microsoft Development since QuickBasic 3.0 (One time leader over on CompuServe etc) and I was the FIRST person to order VB 1.0 (knew when it was going on sale, called right at opening time). This is the first time I'm seriously thinking of abandoning the Microsoft Platform. With most apps being delivered by the browser these days, I can choose what server platform to deliver my HTML/CSS/JQuery etc. We just need another Phillipe Kahn to come out with something the quality (relative to what is current) of the Borland C compiler, and maybe, just maybe, Microsoft will listen to developers again, instead of the PHBs of those developers
Thank you too, we really very happy to use Visual Studio π
You guys staying with ALL CAPS, really?!
Awesome stuff…
i am very happy
It's exceptionally disappointing that the team have ignored the substantial negative user feedback regarding the colourless and SHOUTING UI.
I for one won't be upgrading to this version.
hope it would comes with new advanced features and nice look .
OK, 15 August, who's time zone?
WebMinder: PDT.
What are the system requirements for Visual Studio 2012?
I am looking forward to buying Visual Studio 2012 Professional in October or November of this year.
Also, I need to buy a new laptop. Please let me know, so I know what to buy.
Thank you, and thanks for all of the hard work.
Will MVC 4 final bits be released 8/15 as well, or is it completely out-of-band?
@Ray I Dukes — Agree — this question holds for all the various SDKs. It would also be useful to know when .NET 4.5, MVC 4, etc. will be available on hosted Azure cloud services without having to do some sort of funky install script. For instance, if we start using VS 2012, at what point will all the updated frameworks be part of the OS images on Azure? Can we upgrade our projects to the new frameworks right away, or will we need to stick with old frameworks even if we're using updated tools?
Remember when former president bush said mission accomplish to end the iraq war and years later it is still going on. A close comparison can be made to calling VS complete. it will be years before the bugs are worked out and it is usable. On second thought there hasn't been a Visual Studio product that has made it that far along and vs 2012 will be no different. Sad day for developers, glad to read the hobbiest are happy anyway.
@Stephen Toub: Uhhhh…. I should've asked "What time" ;0) OK, what time today, it is now 0:35 PDT.
Eagerly awaiting for the final release candidate.
Is it still today the RTM will be available for download on msdn?
Will Bizspark members get access today?
It is not in my downloads or product key list.
Thnx,
Thor Kornbrek
tkornbrek@legaldatamgmt.com
I thought today it will be available for download for msdn subscriber!?
Do someone know something?
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio says
"Visual Studio 2012 is complete!
Available for download August 15."
However ALL the links take you to VS 2010. Where is the product available for download (the actual product — not the RC)?
Looking forward to downloading this today.
Hi, When tools like Windows Azure SDK, Azure tools and WIF will be available to download?
No link Yet! Are you sure it is releasing today?
Where's the bits?
Still no sign of the RTM. What gives? Beefing up the servers for the download onslaught? that should have been done days ago.
Please delete my rant! The download deluge has begun!! Thx!!!
Hmmm… shouldn't the download related servers scale seamlessly on Azure? 20 minutes and still can't start a download or get a license key…
Its like a Christmas time but Santa got stuck inside the chimney…I dont get anything from MSDN Subscription atm
The new phonebook's here! The new phonebook's… er, bits are here! Download complete.
Ugly menu.
As most folks are likely now aware, the bits have been released. More information is available at blogs.msdn.com/…/visual-studio-2012-and-net-4-5-now-available.aspx.
@LeTrape: The Windows Azure SDK for .NET has been updated to work with this RTM release.
@Aug 15th: BizSpark benefits come through MSDN, so this should now be available to you.
@John: The system and hardware requirements for Visual Studio Professional 2012 are listed on the product page at http://www.microsoft.com/…/downloads.
@Ray I Dukes: Yes, ASP.NET MVC 4 is now available, from http://www.asp.net/mvc/mvc4.
@Stephen Toub – do you know a date that VS2012 will be available on DreamSpark and DreamSpark Premium?
@cmoore76: Please see Neil Carter's answer in the comments at blogs.msdn.com/…/visual-studio-2012-and-net-4-5-now-available.aspx
For everyone who asked about DreamSpark: Visual Studio 2012 is now available to students through http://www.dreamspark.com.
@Toub Plain sickening 3 people ask about dreamspark and that is responded too, 100+ comments about the horrible UI and bugs that are ignored… Whatever … I had it with anything Microsoft along with this screwed up Visual Studio product.
very bad
Wow! looks good