I had gotten into the habit in VS 2005 DB Edition of enabling the "Always Re-Create Database" option in database project properties. This allowed me to ensure that the db was being re-created from scratch every time I deployed it. I would only deploy the database locally if I had made changes that I wanted to see, or maybe it would happen when running unit tests if so configured.
I was feeling rather puzzled when VS 2008 kept auto-deploying my database project every time I entered the debugger. However, it turns out that this is due to VS 2008 having a different default value for a setting that prior to today, had never entered my reality: "Only build startup projects and dependencies on Run". All you need to do is check this box, and you're back to only deploying when you want to.
After installing Visual Studio 2008, I noticed that the default web browser was set to Firefox. Although this is probably the correct behavior, Firefox being my system default, I'm pretty sure that prior versions of VS ignored my OS-level selection and made IE the initial default. To select a different browser, open an ASPX page, and select “File” -> “Browse With”, or right-click an ASPX resource in Solution Explorer, and choose “Browse With”. This will open a dialog where you can choose a different browser, and optionally make it the default.