VANCOUVER, British Columbia – December 6, 2000 – ActiveState, the leading provider of Internet programming software and services announces the beta release of Visual Perl, a plug-in for Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET. Visual Perl offers a full-featured integrated development environment that enables programmers to rapidly build software using the most popular open source programming language for development on the Internet. The GUI environment has all the standard features of a modern IDE such as rich syntax-aware editor, method tips, on-line help, and debugger support.
"This is the perfect solution for programmers who are attracted to the power and agility of Perl but want to code in a visual environment on Windows," said Dick Hardt, Founder & CEO, ActiveState. "Programmers familiar with Visual Studio and Perl can take advantage of the advanced features in Visual Studio's IDE and will be more productive immediately."
"Given ActiveState's excellent work on Perl and Python for the Windows platform, we're delighted to have them as a VSIP partner," said David Lazar, Group Product Manager, .NET Tools and Services, Microsoft. "ActiveState's Visual Perl and upcoming Visual Python give the millions of Visual Studio programmers greater choice in using their preferred development language for building Web applications."
Visual Perl features:
- Syntax-based colorized editor for instant feedback as you write code
- Code-completion assistance such as method tips and call tips that save extra documentation trips
- Online documentation
- Ability to run programs in a debugger or shell
- Automatic highlights of syntax errors as they are introduced
- Linking of error messages in a task list to the error source
"Visual Perl programmers will recognize the supporting environment and can concentrate on solving problems," stated Eric Promislow, Visual Perl / Visual Python Project Lead, ActiveState. "Professional developers will appreciate Visual Perl's depth with features like: incremental search, multi-file search, code elision, breakpoint management, and a configurable source-code control interface assist programmers in developing code quickly."
About Visual Studio.NET: Visual Studio.NET provides enabling technologies to simplify the creation, deployment, and ongoing evolution of secure, scalable, Web applications and Web Services. These include: shared editors for use in all Visual Studio languages; Web and Windows forms; XML-based Web services; and more. Further details are available at: Visual Studio.
About ActiveState: ActiveState is at the forefront of open source software, providing Internet programming products and services for all popular operating systems and platforms. ActiveState's key technologies are Perl, the Internet's most popular programming language, Python, a user-friendly scripting language, and XSLT, the XML transformation language. ActiveState solutions provide enterprise-wide deployment of open source programming languages, improved programmer productivity, and seamless integration with other technologies. The Visual Python beta will be released shortly.
Media and Analyst Contact:
Lori Pike, ActiveState 604.808.6655
The information contained in this document relates to prerelease software product that may be substantially modified before its first commercial release. Accordingly, the information may not accurately describe or reflect the software product when first commercially released. This document is provided for informational purposes only, and Microsoft and ActiveState make no warranties, express or implied, with respect to this document or the information contained in it.
