Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Beta available

You can now go to the Microsoft connect site to get your hands dirty on the beta version of a service pack of Visual Studio 2005 and Team Foundation Server! (Doesn't that sound sweet the Beta of a Service Pack J)

The great thing about this service pack is that it does not only provide lots of fixes for some problems with TFS it also includes some great new features. E.g. It now enables us to add custom controls to our work items and also enables a VPN-less connection to a team foundation server!

If you want to give it an try, go to the Microsoft connect website and logon using your passport (or should I call it your Live ID J) Then go to available connections and look for "Visual Studio and .NET framework". There you can find a nomination form you fill out, and submit. This will result in a pending application for the beta. Don't worry if you would be accepted, normally everyone gets accepted regardless of what you filled out n the nomination form. It is more used to get more information on who is interested in the beta. After a few hours, you will get an email back that you have been accepted to participate and then you can download the Beta installation package.

There are basically two packages, one for Visual Studio itself (VS80sp1-KB918525-X86-Beta-ENU.exe ) and one for Team Foundation Server( VS80sp1-KB922996-X86-Beta-ENU.exe)  The first one is for patching your Visual Studio IDE and the second one is for the Team Foundation Server.

One thing to note is that you can install the beta of the service pack without worrying about the fact if you can install the RTM version later. The RTM can be installed after uninstalling the beta.

One thing you also might want to know is that the TFS SP1  is 100% compatible with non SP1 Visual Studio installations. So there is no issue in SP1 clients connecting to non SP1 servers and visa versa.