...begins in June, does it? Don't fancy your software much :D

Sorry, this has come to the point of being utterly embarrassing for M$. So to try Product A beta 1 you cannot use Product B production version at the same time. However, Product B beta 1 requires that you uninstall Product A beta 1 which in turn....

The worst mistake in my view is with .NET. Wasn't that supposed to handle versioning? Is it impossible to have three .NET versions happily share my machine? At least with Java in Linux is without too much problem.

I guess this is the price you have to pay for having a system where "everything" is integrated and closely dependent of "everything"

It might be no more than decision takers/developers being on leave?

I guess that important stuff like that probably encompassing different teams equally probably has project management issues that require some form of signing off at one stage or another.

A big project is probably a great challenge to manage anyway.

If you are beta this + beta that + beta other thing + (what the hell) one more beta;

1. You are a very impatient person.

2. You can expect (and deserve) a few problems.

3. I'm surprised you read this far.

Wow...... Jumpin' Jehosaphats, B@man, AI Beta Lead ProgramMIng, 42 Rule in the Roost with Any and All, would be Helpful.

Sounds like an Information Overload/Buffer OverRun Stack Problem, although that would/could also be Perceived and Realised as an Embarrassment of Riches to be Secured and XXXXPLored in the Chronicling of AI Pinging Dynasty. Perfect for Mature and Highly Sophisticated, Simply CompleXXXX dDevelopers, dDevelopers, dDevelopers, dDevelopers, .... and hence the PerlyGatesPython Halo BeDecked Icon for Full Monty ProgramMIng.

@ Rich Harding

Maybe their calendar is built into MS Exchange. Explains it all really.

/ Mines the one with the leap year bug in the pocket.

Beta software is there for people to test. It's not recommended to be used on production machines. Sometimes they're fixes (eg. SP1 for VS2008), sometimes they're new technologies (eg. Silverlight 2).

In general, it's not advised to mix betas - particularly when those products directly interact with each other (eg. Silverlight 2 dev is in done in VS2008). So mixing a service pack beta with a new technology beta is likely to cause problems.

It's the same as when VS2008 was in beta. There were a number of CTPs which were out there, and you had to get the right combination of CTPs if you wanted to do Silverlight etc.

As for having multiple versions of .Net on your machine? Yes - you can - but I believe you're limited to only 1 version of a particular version. So, you can have .Net 1, 1.1, 2, 3, 3.5 all on your machine. However you can't have .Net 2 and .Net 2 SP1 installed simultaneously, because the SP1 of .Net 2 updates .Net 2. The same applies to Beta SPs.

The issue is most probably that VS2008 Beta 1 includes a beta SP for .Net, whereas the beta Silverlight stuff relies on the non-beta .Net edition.

As stated, shortly the Silverlight branch will have the VS2008 SP1 changed merged into it, producing Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2. Perfectly normal software development practices.

Anyone who expects betas (even from the same company) to play nice is plain daft. The clue is in the name - BETA! Now if the RTMs dont play well then theres clearly an issue, but seriously, if your not prepared for some inconsistancies/instabilities/incompatibilities then dont use beta software - whether its MS, Apple, Adobe, whatever.

Its a beta isnt it?

The Register has run out of storys I take it

Silverlight has been dogged with compatibility issues for most of its short life.

Trying to move from each version / sub version to the next has often been a pain.

Needlessly trying to get people to use Expression blend etc. does not help.

A Silverlight "real news" story would have been seamless upgrade and integration with VS 2008

A far cry from what a lot of MS developers would actually like -

a nice simple way to run a subset of c# (or other .NET language) functionality on the client side and (optionally) have it communicate with your software on the server.

..Essentially a way to replace JavaScript with something more "controlled" (albeit potentially irritating to users) - similar to Flash - users can choose to use it (or not) but it is self contained and (assuming a plugin is provided for a given OS) does allow consistent beahviour across platforms - and those wanting an "old skool" web experience can happily disable it.

Note, personally I am not a fan of Web 2.0, websites trying to be hugely complex / multimedia rich etc - unfortunately I have to pay my bills and its the sort of dross a lot of clients want. No prizes for guessing I run FF with JS and Flash disabled as default config ;-)

Sheesh

...and wait for M$ to fix this. Exactly WHY should we stop developing flash??

Sorry M$, people need to develop things today and make a profit by lunchtime

Shock Headline: Beta Software Full Of Bugs.

'cmon its not finished, its not even a release candidate its a BETA

If you want to develop Silverlight 2 apps then use the silverlight beta and the VS Release, but dont complain when SL 2 is released and things work just differently enough to cause you problems.

Beta tech should never be used in production, its asking for trouble.

"Beta tech should never be used in production, its asking for trouble"

Who has time to develop in both the beta AND production versions? Certainly not me!!

it ain't about the technologoy, it is about people's capacity to absorb technologies.

I thought that the "Visual" part of Visual Studio meant that you could Visually design an interface, and from that interface, develop the code that ran it.

So Now, will Microsoft be soon shipping MS C++ Design Studio and Visual Basic Desigh Studio to develop Windows Forms GUI's and force the developers to use Visual Studio for the actual code?

Silly? I thought so until I found out that you cannot design a form for Silverlight with VS2008, and you had to do everything in code - a complete reversal from what Visual Studio meant for me.

Also, it would seem again to me that silverlight 1 has not even left the starting blocks that MS is now pushing production development on Silverlight betas...

MS really has to get a decent and coherent stance on this: When C# was introduced in .NET several years ago, it was clear that it was a new development language.

Today, silverlight is out for a year or so now, and I have only just discovered that it's a sort of Adobe Flex... and even tutorial websites get lost about what Silverlight really is...

Clean up your ship Microsoft. If no-one understands what you are doing due to the fact you have too many disparate voices telling people how great the technology is without telling people *what* it is, No-one knows "where they want to go today".