Soon, I hope, Microsoft will stop playing coy about the next version of Visual Studio and finally tell us what it's all about. It’ll be like a giant birthday party for developers, where we finally get to unwrap the big present that's been sitting there for so long.

Of course, at April's Visual C++ Developers Conference, we got to shake the box and get some idea of what was inside. Here are some of the things Microsoft has shown us … and the reactions from some of you.

A uniter, not a divider: If you're used to working in VC++ but make occasional forays into VB, you'll no longer feel like your world has turned upside down. In VS7, a "unified development environment" will give you access to the same features and tools, no matter what language you're using.

Office Assistant … erm … Context Window: While you program, the new "Context Window" will give you on-the-fly help, based on the language and code you're using. Microsoft seems excited about this feature, but many developers seem worried it will intrude when not wanted. Darren Seryck, a VCDJ reader, says, "I can imagine it saying, 'It looks like you’re writing a loop. Would you like help on writing a loop?'" For its part, Microsoft assures me this is not the dreaded Office Assistant, and there will be no cloying paper clips or purring cats barging in with unwanted advice.

Cool debugging tools: Microsoft is making a big to-do over VS7's "fine-grained execution control." It has also talked a lot about VS7’s capability to do a single-debug instance across multiple languages, with Edit-Continue intact. Edit-Continue is also considerably beefier now, requiring fewer cases where you must recompile and start over.

The troubleshooting feature I'm most excited about, though, is the new power behind postmortem debugging. You can restore the app with stacks intact to the precise point before the crash, as if you had stepped right to it.

Three words—Internet, Internet, Internet: To date, Microsoft has talked more about the new ATL Server functionality than just about anything else. Through ATL Server, you'll be able to expose any function as a Web Service.

VS7 is leveraging XML heavily with its new Web Services (which are built on top of SOAP). VS7 will automatically generate the XML interface to give you access to the necessary schema, as well as parse XML and create the plumbing you need to invoke a Web Service.

Let’s go SRFing: At least in my mind, one of the coolest things we'll see in VS7 is Stencil Response Files (SRF files), which let you merge your business logic right into your Web-formatted page. They’re easy to work with, because they're just standard HTML files, containing additional programming information the ATL Server parses. In short, SRF files merge the power and speed of C++ with the easy formatting of HTML. That rocks.

VC++ gets shorthand: The big drawback to using wizards for common tasks is the screenfuls of generated code you’ll never modify. Attributed code in VS7 solves this by having built-in declarative keywords for these common tasks. I love this idea, but VCDJ reader Keith Kelly makes a good point: "Adding proprietary extensions to the language is a recipe for disaster. It increases an already-steep learning curve, rather than reducing it. I suspect that by the time VC++ 8.0 comes along, the average (non-MSVS) C++ developer will not even recognize the language of a VC++ code snippet."

What about power? What about standards? Kevin King, another VCDJ reader, points out that what many developers think about has little to do with cool features and interface issues, and a lot to do with power and speed: "But what about the C++ enhancements? Is there better support for the standard? Are the executables substantially faster, and is there support for Pentium III and Athlon chipsets?"