Looks like the next version of Visual Studio, code named Orcas will ship in February along with .NET FX 3.5:
"The next version of Visual Studio, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (formerly known as Microsoft Visual Studio code name "Orcas"), will provide a developer experience for Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, and the Web. To enable early feedback, Microsoft provides Community Technology Preview (CTP) and Beta releases of Visual Studio 2008. Get an early look at Visual Studio 2008 Beta 1 and check back for the late-summer Beta 2 release."
-MSDN
What does this mean? For one, if you are working with .NET 3.0, you will now have a fully integrated development environment with full support for WCF, WPF and WF templates out of the box.
It also brings the following "red bits" features back into the main product, including ASP.NET AJAX and the Web Application Project template.
If you are doing WCF, a number of new serialization and messaging features will be added including:
- AJAX,
- JSON,
- REST
- POX
- RSS
- ATOM
LINQ is also a big one which will change how we do DAL development. Unlike .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5 introduces a change to the C# compiler and a new CLR which will definetely make the development and deployment experience interesting...