As interest in Visual Studio 2017 Version 15.3 grows, Microsoft released its third preview recently. The focus has been on upgrading and strengthening existing features with emphasis on accessibility, performance and reliability. As a .Net development company have a new tools, innovations, bug fixes and better platform support.
The ‘Preview’ is released to essentially gather feedback from enthusiasts. For the users it is a golden chance to suggest improvements to a vital IDE that they will be working in extensively in the very near future. But this is essentially a pre-release and will hence, is not licensed to support production.
Visual Studio Preview can be installed on a machine along with existing Visual Studio. However, extensions will have to be reinstalled for both. Installation will take place only once where an extension is shared by both.
Some key points are:
- Lightweight solution load will now support bigger C++ solutions. This will enable projects in the language to load significantly faster.
- Continuous Delivery Tools now have automatic NET or ASP.NET configuration, deploying on the Azure Web App Services. This will effectively enable developers to stay on at the Visual Studio for their projects.
- Fix the existing problems with the Visual Studio extensions. Although the IDE architecture of extensions is crucial for its productivity and functionality, multiple extensions often result in slower speeds. The latest version has tried to fix this with better diagnostics that will help you pinpoint faulting extensions.
- Get real time feedback on .Net Core projects.
- Application Insights Search tool will now have ‘related event’ cluster for tracking app behaviour. You can now detect search patterns like peak hours for search, large search volumes according to location, sex or income group.
Improvements in .NET Core and ASP.NET Core:
- The IDE will now support .NET Core 2.0 apps creation and deployment if SDK is installed.
- Live Unit Testing support for .NET Core projects.
- .NET Core console applications, and .NET Core and .NET Standard class libraries now accessible through Visual Basic.
- In ASP.NET Core Nano can be used as the container platform. The path is File->New Project for ASP.NET Core projects.
Debugging improvements:
Better debugging support for .NET Core apps in Windows. The SetThreadDescription API will now have support while debugging.
IDE Improvements:
- The ‘hidden window’ bug that often caused the Visual Studio to hang even before the main window loaded has been fixed.
- Easier to dismiss notification tips.
- Support for file globbing outside project folder.
- Fixed the account picker to correct “Re-enter credentials” issues.
Redgate Data Tools:
- Improvement in icon responsiveness in the toolbar.
- Increasing functionality in Project Settings Tab.
- Improved functionality in Getting Started view, Deployment Summary, and Login Window.
- Added support for SQL Authentication when opening SSMS.
Visual Studio for Mac:
Adding to its cross-platform ability the new versions also include Visual Studio for Mac. It will also have game development support with Unity 5.6.1. It will be supported across MacOS systems, from web, mobile to the Cloud. This will also allow Mac users to work with Xamarin, C#, HTML5, CSS3, ASP.NET Core and JavaScript.
Johnny Morgan
Latest posts by Johnny Morgan (see all)
- Preview & Update Latest Version 15.3 Visual Studio 2017 - July 21, 2017
- Artificial Intelligence and CRM—A Match Made in Heaven - April 25, 2017
- How to Promote Mobility with Apache Hadoop? - April 5, 2017