Sometimes being surprised is a good thing. For example, you may have been pleasantly surprised to find the new WYSIWYG page layout editor that came along in the previous release of Force.com. It lets you design and build much more accurately and much faster, which is always a good thing.

Sometimes being surprised is an embarrassing thing—such as discovering too late a feature that could have saved you time. Don’t let that happen to you—register for the Force.com Summer ’09 Platform Release Preview webinar! Actually, we have two webinars: one for the platform, and one for salesforce.com applications.

The platform webinar, part of the Tech Talk Series, will describe and demonstrate many of the new Force.com features that will be available in Summer ’09. Although the release is still under wraps, you can get an insight into some of the features by looking at the Ideas site. Here are a few ideas marked as coming in the next release:

• Add Eclipse 3.4 compatibility to Force.com IDE
• Display actual values in charts
• Use a picklist value in a formula without ISPICKVAL

So don’t be caught by surprise – register now.

PS. Yes, I borrowed this text heavily from the newsletter promo I wrote a few weeks ago!