As mentioned in Last week's Sitefinity Thunder webinar, the free extension is on a very aggressive release schedule, with a new release coming approximately every two weeks.
Last week marked the latest Thunder release, which coincided with the Sitefinity 5.0 Service Pack 1. If you haven't already downloaded the service pack, be sure to look for it (and the updated SDK) in your Sitefinity account.
VB Support
Thunder 1.0.8.0 now includes VB support for item templates such as Widgets and Control Designers. Simply select your language when adding a template:
Create, Rename, Duplicate Widget Templates
Another great new feature is the ability to easily add new templates for your widgets by duplicating existing ones, so that you have a solid starting point for a new template.
This is especially helpful if you want to render different layouts or designs for different content from the same module, such as separating news categories.
You also have the ability to rename, duplicate, or delete unused or unwanted templates right from the visual studio interface
Update Today
Several internal performance improvements were made including a known issue that caused Thunder connections to hang.
So for better performance, and of course new features, be sure to always keep your Thunder extension updated!
Remember that you need to also update the Sitefinity Thunder Module installed in your Sitefinity website. This is easily done using the Thunder menu in Visual Studio:
Or you can use the Download button in the Connection Explorer to download a zip file for simple deployment to a remote server.
As always, be sure to share your feedback and suggestions in the dedicated Sitefinity Thunder discussion forum, as your feedback is especially important to us.