With Microsoft making generally available the Visual Studio 2013 bits on October 17, it's a good time to check in on TypeScript, Microsoft's superset of JavaScript.

Microsoft execs have gone public with the next few planned milestones toward version 1.0 — minus any mentions of concrete target dates.

On October 1, 2012, Microsoft took the wraps off TypeScript , a new programming language that is aimed at making JavaScript development scale beyond the client. The TypeScript team — headed by Technical Fellow and father of C# Anders Hejlsberg — has made available a number of test builds of TypeScript, a TypeScript language specification and the source code for the TypeScript compiler.

Microsoft made available a TypeScript for Visual Studio 2012 plug-in, providing JavaScript developers with Visual Studio features like code navigation, refactoring, static error messages and IntelliSense.

The TypeScript team delivered TypeScript 0.9.1.1 as part of the Visual Studio 2013 Release Candidate. However, "(g)iven TypeScript’s continued evolution toward 1.0, we’ve decided to keep TypeScript as a separate download in Visual Studio, while continuing to make it easily available for all Visual Studio users," according to today's blog post about TypeScript.

Developers can install the latest TypeScript version using the “Install the Latest TypeScript for Visual Studio” link provided in the new project templates, which will keep them in sync with additional TypeScript drops as it evolves to 1.0.

So what's next from the TypeScript team? A 0.9.5 release is up next, whcih will "resolv(e) user-reported issues." Once 0.9.5 is out, Microsoft expects to release the 1.0 TypeScript spec candidate, which will detail the complete TypeScript 1.0 language.

After that, the team plans to release a near-final TypeScript 1.0 Release Candidate, which will fix remaining reliability issues and complete the compiler alignment with the language spec. At some point after that, Microsoft will deliver the 1.0 TypeScript release.