On the day that the ASP.NET team announce their new WYSIWYG IDE for Visual Studio Orcas (start downloading that base VPC now), it seems appropriate to have a quick muse about when to talk about new releases of software and their contents. Jeremy Miller started a post series about ‘ilities’ today so I’d put a vote in for a fuller discussion than this on Visibility. Microsoft’s monthly(-ish) CTP releases may be a burden to our phone bills but they also make transparent the direction that the product will go which promotes discussion and sometimes even a change in tack of development. Which is good. Compare and contract Fog Creek software’s reluctance to release details of Fogbugz v6.0 despite some debate on its support forums. Joel Spolsky, the owner of Fog Creek, explains neatly why he prefers less frequent releases and not releasing information about what’s in a new release here, but is a black box approach wise? Ship dates aside, when do you think initial information about a new project or version of a new product should be released?