This week, I'll be sharing information about the upcoming VS.Php 2.5 release. The first feature I'll like to share is the support for new project types.

Here is a screenshot of the project types available in VS.Php 2.5:

These are the new project types:

This is a maintenance release for VS.Php 2.4. The following changes are included:

• Fix Vista DEP issues
• Fix Xdebug issues when steping into static method calls. Prevents certain lock ups.
• Allow you to select the platform from the standard toolbar no matter what node in the project is selected. Before you could only do this if you selected the solution node.
• Implement the "Open Folder" and "Copy File Path" menus from the text editor when right clicking on the file tab.
• FTPS works in explicit mode by default

During the past few weeks, I've been quietly updating some of the tutorials on the site. I was using wink in the past which is a great tool and it's free but I had issues with it on Vista. So I decided to try Camtasia and although it is not free, it is a very good tool and worth the money.

Here are some of the tutorials that have been updated so far:

- http://www.jcxsoftware.com/jcx/vsphp/tutorials/debug_output
- http://www.jcxsoftware.com/jcx/vsphp/tutorials/debug_engine
- http://www.jcxsoftware.com/jcx/vsphp/tutorials/runtime_selection

I'm please to announce that our partners from Asial have release VS.Php 2.4 to the Japanese market. We are very excited about this release and look forward many more releases with our great team in Japan. In particular Miwa Kawahara, who has done a terrific job in getting everything ready for the release.

Congratulations to the Asial team for a job well done!

We are posting this bug fix release to address a couple of issues including:

• Breakpoints been ignored on remote projects. This happened if the remote server was using virtual directories
• Added robustness in the debugger engine
• Fix various stability issues with the remote open dialog.
• Fix various issues with the website copy feature
• Add @method to the list in PhpDoc
• Enable registering custom extensions with VS.Php on VS2008

Today, we aligned the official release of VS.Php for Visual Studio 2008 with Microsoft's release of their trifecta of Windows 2008, Sql Server 2008 and importantly for us, Visual Studio 2008.

Microsoft is a great supporter of Php on Visual Studio. Brian Goldfarb, group product manager in the Developer Platform & Tools Team at Microsoft Corp said: "By utilizing the new features in Visual Studio 2008, PHP developers can build and deploy PHP applications faster and with a higher quality."

I'm glad to annouce we are releasing VS.Php for Visual Studio 2008 today. A few comments on this release and the upgrade process:

• If you have VS.Php 2005 and want to get a serial for 2008, you need to purchase an upgrade license. Except those who purchased VS.Php 2005 since last December.
• If you purchase VS.Php 2005 starting today, you are not elegible for a free upgrade edition to 2008.
• Upgrade purchases may take up to 24 hours to be processed. Please ensure you enter your previous order id to speed up the process.

Please note free upgrades from 2005 to 2008 apply only to customers who purchased VS.Php 2.4 for Visual Studio 2005 between Dec 3, 2007 and January 31, 2008.

If you purchased VS.Php 2.4 for Visual Studio 2005, you qualify for a free upgrade to VS.Php 2.4 for Visual Studio 2008. We are getting closed to release and we are now issuing serials for those customers interested in upgrading free. Please contact us with your order id and we will issue the new serial for you.

For those interested in trying out VS.Php 2.4 for Visual Studio 2008 check the beta page for the latest downloads:

http://www.jcxsoftware.com/jcx/vsphp/beta

We should be working out the issues in the next couple of weeks and releasing it by the end of January.

I realized a lot of people are interested in moving to Visual Studio 2008. Here is a sneak peak of VS.Php running inside Visual Studio 2008:

We are planning to make it available soon for beta testing!