Microsoft Corp. has made available a new build of its Visual Studio 2005 integrated development environment.

The Redmond, Wash., software giant released the latest version of its Visual Studio 2005 CTP (Community Technology Preview) last week for developers looking to get better acquainted with the tool set.

Soma Somasegar, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Developer Division, said the latest CTP is the first for Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition, which the company announced in September at the VSLive! conference in Orlando, Fla.

Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition features support for all of the languages supported in the Visual Studio platform as well as support for device development and an updated release of Microsoft's Visual SourceSafe source-code management tool.

This CTP is available for download on the Microsoft Developer Network.

Click here to find out how Microsoft is strengthening security in Visual Studio 2005.

At VSLive!, Somasegar said Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition offers ease-of-use features similar to the Visual Studio Express tools, but it also enables the development of data-driven smart-client and Web applications.

The CTP focusing on Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition is known as the November CTP. Microsoft also plans to release a "December CTP" that will focus on Visual Studio Team System. This CTP was initially expected to be delivered before Christmas, but it could come later, sources said.

This article was first published on eweek.com.