It was bound to happen that F# would become part of the languages supported in Visual Studio. The F# language started as a research project at Microsoft. F# is considered a functional program language. It is more functional that other language for the processing data and a large volume of data and calculations. It works based on three main keywords but allows you to full interact with the .Net Framework and all its classes.

When you create F# project there are fewer options than other languages. There is no real Asp.Net web site template in F#. Not to say that you couldn’t do it manually. The other languages do a really a good job of these kind of projects. For F# the best would be best used in components which chew up data and spit them out to a presentation systems UI. If you really want to you can create form objects and display and model data visually.   

In Visual Studio 2010 there have been some noticeable improvements in the C++ compiler. Microsoft licenses its C++ base implementation from a standards company. The last few versions of the compiler have not included the benefits of the code that has been updated in the last few versions of VS. Most of these improvements are low level and not too relevant to most .Net developers.

In the C++ world things must be considered that .Net developers for the most part never have to think about. However with C++ team working more closely with the people who update the main C++ definition we can expect years of upgrades for C++.

Although small it’s profound as well because performance enhancements will be available for an application simply by recompiling. Before upgrading you should check your project to make sure there are not compile errors.

As things were fixed to the standard it may expose some library include issues. Note that even core Microsoft products had compile issues because the standard does not dictate which libraries should be imported where. As the code was upgraded things were fixed to use less includes. When those were dropped people with existing code find a missing include library statement here and there.

Some specifics as I understood them were Perfect Forwarding with pointer references to improve use of shared pointers. A very practical improvement is the ability to move rather than copying elements of a vector. Today we occur overhead to copy items in a vector. There were improvements in the Variadic Templates. The ability to use type safe function arguments. Keep an eye out for the new Visual Studio.

Windows 7 Taskbar Improvements         
DirectX improvements

The Windows 7 Taskbar team has been working to improve the taskbar interface. Notable are improvements on managing running applications. The same thumbnail preview on programs in the taskbar is still there but when you engage with the thumbnail then you will have a full screen preview.  There is also a recent history list available on every running application in the taskbar. Also applications can be designed to take advantage of targeting multiple thumbnails for applications like Excel where there may be several files open. One thumbnail could be presented for each open file. This behavior has to be implemented by the software developers.

The GDI and GDI+ interfaces have been improved but the major focus is on moving application support to DirectX which is clearly becoming the new clear choice for graphics drawing surfaces. Microsoft developers implied that the GDI+ is based on old graphical concepts unlike the DirectX which is simply more modern.

Some improvements with DirectX and how it works with the DWM (Desktop Windows Manager). Vista has been storing copies of Windows in the memory on the main motherboard and as well in the video card memory. Windows 7 will improve on how the DWM works. The DWM basically draws all the windows in memory including video surfaces. This is how Vista can show you a thumbnail of Windows Media Player with full video.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/

E-Commerce applications with Microsoft Touch support.

All windows and Internet Explorer applications will support basic touch features for free. Windows Touch allows users to interact with large touch screen monitors. Exactly what you see on CNN where reporters bring news to the screen simply by dragging it to the screen. Similar to the Tablet PC which has ink support.

Some applications benefit out of the box with extra Touch support. Using the Touch framework currently in Beta you can create applications which support more gestures and with cooler support with Touch. The increased physics allows for table touch screen surface with multiple windows you can slide around or even slide to the corner for later. For sales and order reviews at manager and executive meetings. Also large touch panels can be used in presentation to show sales and analytical data to principle players. Also worth noting is that Touch now provides some window bumps and other signals to provide feedback to users.