Visual Studio 11: Only For Windows 7 or higher

Martin Brinkmann
May 23, 2012
Updated • Jun 12, 2012
Microsoft
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Windows 8 is not the only product that Microsoft is currently working on.  The company is also working on a refresh of their popular Visual Studio product lineup, and boy, there will be changes that will certainly irritate part of the user base that is currently working with the product.

Microsoft notes that Visual Studio 11 will only be available for Windows 7 or higher (which at the time of writing means Windows 8), and not for Vista, XP or other Windows operating systems.  According to the official announcement, this is due to the leveraging of core capabilities that only those operating systems offer. Microsoft unfortunately fails to mention what these core capabilities are.

The company notes further that the default target for applications will be set to .Net Framework 4.5 when it comes to managed apps, which means that those will run on Windows Vista or higher, and not on Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. If compatibility is an issue, developers can target new or existing applications to the .NET Framework 4.0 to ensure compatibility with those operating systems. I guess that is also official confirmation that the next iteration of the .Net Framework will not be compatible with Windows XP or Windows Server 2003.

visual studio 11

But that is far from the only changes that will affect lots of Visual Studio users. Microsoft is a bit ambiguous in the blog post when it comes to Visual Studio 11 Express, and its support for desktop app development.

For example, the Express edition for Windows 8 allows developers to use C#, Visual Basic, C++ and JavaScript. It also provides best-in-class tools for creating Metro style apps for Windows 8, including tools such as Blend, app profiling, unit testing and more.

The Visual Studio 11 Express website on the other hand offers the following information that make it a lot clearer:

Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows 8 provides tools for Metro style app development. To create desktop apps, you need to use Visual Studio 11 Professional, or higher. In addition, Visual Studio 2010 Express products - Visual Basic 2010 Express, Visual C++ 2010 Express, and Visual C# 2010 Express - will remain available for free download.

This basically means that Windows 8 users who install Visual Studio 11 Express will only be able to develop Metro apps with it. And Windows 7 users? It is likely that they can continue developing desktop applications with the programming environment, as it would not really make much sense to only give them the option to create Metro apps - which they can't test or use on the system - in Visual Studio Express 11.

Update: It seems that Windows 7 users won't be able to use Visual Studio 11 Express at all, only Express for Web and Team Foundation Server Express.

Users who want to stick with Visual Studio when it comes to developing applications need to download and use the previous versions of the program which have been available for a while.

What's your take on this?

Update: Microsoft has made a correction and announced Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop.

dhering to the core principles we’ve set for our Express products, Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop will provide a simple, end-to-end development experience for developing Windows desktop applications targeted to run on all versions of Windows supported by Visual Studio 2012. With this new Express edition, developers will be able to use C++, C#, or Visual Basic to create Windows desktop and console applications.  Developers will also get access to new advances available across the Express family in Visual Studio 2012, such as the latest compilers and programming language tools, integrated unit testing, and the ability for small development teams to collaborate via Team Explorer and TFS Express.

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Comments

  1. Some Dude said on March 19, 2023 at 11:42 am
    Reply

    Are these articles AI generated?

    Now the duplicates are more obvious.

    1. boris said on March 19, 2023 at 11:48 pm
      Reply

      This is below AI generated crap. It is copy of Microsoft Help website article without any relevant supporting text. Anyway you can find this information on many pages.

  2. Paul(us) said on March 20, 2023 at 1:32 am
    Reply

    Yes, but why post the exact same article under a different title twice on the same day (19 march 2023), by two different writers?
    1.) Excel Keyboard Shortcuts by Trevor Monteiro.
    2.) 70+ Excel Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows by Priyanka Monteiro

    Why oh why?

    1. Clairvaux said on September 6, 2023 at 11:30 am
      Reply

      Yeah. Tell me more about “Priyanka Monteiro”. I’m dying to know. Indian-Portuguese bot ?

  3. John G. said on August 18, 2023 at 4:36 pm
    Reply

    Probably they will announce that the taskbar will be placed at top, right or left, at your will.

    Special event by they is a special crap for us.

  4. yanta said on August 18, 2023 at 11:59 pm
    Reply

    If it’s Microsoft, don’t buy it.
    Better brands at better prices elsewhere.

  5. John G. said on August 20, 2023 at 4:22 am
    Reply

    All new articles have zero count comments. :S

  6. Anonymous said on September 5, 2023 at 7:48 am
    Reply

    WTF? So, If I add one photo to 5 albums, will it count 5x on my storage?
    It does not make any sense… on google photos, we can add photo to multiple albums, and it does not generate any additional space usage

    I have O365 until end of this year, mostly for onedrive and probably will jump into google one

  7. St Albans Digital Printing Inc said on September 5, 2023 at 11:53 am
    Reply

    Photo storage must be kept free because customers chose gadgets just for photos and photos only.

  8. Anonymous said on September 5, 2023 at 12:47 pm
    Reply

    What a nonsense. Does it mean that albums are de facto folders with copies of our pictures?

    1. GG said on September 6, 2023 at 8:24 am
      Reply

      Sounds exactly like the poor coding Microsoft is known for in non-critical areas i.e. non Windows Core/Office Core.

      I imagine a manager gave an employee the task to create the album feature with hardly any time so they just copied the folder feature with some cosmetic changes.

      And now that they discovered what poor management results in do they go back and do the album feature properly?

      Nope, just charge the customer twice.

      Sounds like a go-getter that needs to be promoted for increasing sales and managing underlings “efficiently”, said the next layer of middle management.

  9. d3x said on September 5, 2023 at 7:33 pm
    Reply

    When will those comments get fixed? Was every editor here replaced by AI and no one even works on this site?

  10. Scroogled said on September 5, 2023 at 10:47 pm
    Reply

    Instead of a software company, Microsoft is now a fraud company.

  11. ard said on September 7, 2023 at 4:59 pm
    Reply

    For me this is proof that Microsoft has a back-door option into all accounts in their cloud.
    quote “…… as the MSA key allowed the hacker group access to virtually any cloud account at Microsoft…..”
    unquote

    so this MSA key which is available to MS officers can give access to all accounts in MS cloud.This is the backdoor that MS has into the cloud accounts. Lucky I never got any relevant files of mine in their (MS) cloud.

  12. Andy Prough said on September 7, 2023 at 6:52 pm
    Reply

    >”Now You: what is your theory?”

    That someone handed an employee a briefcase full of cash and the employee allowed them access to all their accounts and systems.

    Anything that requires 5-10 different coincidences to happen is highly unlikely. Occam’s razor.

  13. TelV said on September 8, 2023 at 12:04 pm
    Reply

    Good reason to never login to your precious machine with a Microsoft a/c a.k.a. as the cloud.

  14. Anonymous said on September 18, 2023 at 1:23 pm
    Reply

    The GAFAM are always very careless about our software automatically sending to them telemetry and crash dumps in our backs. It’s a reminder not to send them anything when it’s possible to opt out, and not to opt in, considering what they may contain. And there is irony in this carelessness biting them back, even if in that case they show that they are much more cautious when it’s their own data that is at stake.

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