Microsoft this week announced that Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 have released to manufacturing (RTM) and are now available for MSDN subscribers to download, and will be available soon to Microsoft's customers through its various other channels. Visual Studio 2008 has new support for Web server communication techniques for AJAX/JSON, the company noted.

Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 are core components of the Microsoft application platform.

"Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework make it easy for development organizations and developers of all skill levels to build software and services on the latest platforms including the Web, Windows Vista, the 2007 Office system, and Windows Server 2008," said S. “Soma” Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft.

"Since releasing Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions we’ve seen more than 17 million downloads and we’ve continued to provide valuable resources for non-professional developers, such as the Beginner Developer Learning Center, which provides a variety of no-charge lessons and getting started videos to take the beginning developer from the basics to becoming a full-fledged developer," he added.

Visual Studio 2008’s general improvements to JavaScript coding (IntelliSense, syntax check, debugging) help with writing JavaScript code, Microsoft said in an accompanying announcement. 

This dovetails well with the inclusion of the ASP.NET AJAX library to create a first-class experience for building next-generation Web applications, the company stated.