I attended Microsoft’s Launch Event today featuring the launch of Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 (but then how have I already been using VS2008 for the past few months? hm…)

We got there a little early, got our nametags and roamed about the Convention Center. After a little swaging, snacking and guitar heroing, we proceeded to the session.

Not too bad of a turnout. The first couple session were on new features in Visual Studio 2008 and web development. We were shown IntelliSense for CSS and Javascript. Pretty cool, although something you already knew if you’ve been using it or if you keep up on the blogs. Then he showed us how to use UpdatePanels and Watermarks… Um, how is that new?

You can see how the first half went. Anyway, the third and fourth sessions were on Office add-ins, mobile development and WPF. Saw some new controls for MFC (it’s about time the C++ guys got some lovin) including the ribbon, command buttons and hyperlinks.

And the prize for sitting through it all. Now we just have to see exactly what is trial software and what’s the real deal…