Microsoft has finally released the Visual Studio and is downloadable at the company's Visual Studio website. It also comes with an offer that gives early adaptors 60 days of access to Xamarin University to learn to code.
New Features And Enhancements
According to an article, the new version is quick to install and is lightweight which users can then add features as required. It is also now keen on cross-platform development where Visual C++ can now target Linux and Android.
The cross-platform now has .NET core, the cross-platform version of .NET where users will have to check on a couple of boxes first to build web applications for Linux and then debug them in Docker containers from within the Visual Studio. In terms of performance, the .NET Core is faster when compared to the full .NET Framework.
The new versions come with Xamarin tools for cross-platform mobile development with .NET and a previewer for Xamarin Forms which allows defining user interface using XAML. In addition, users can now also target Universal Windows Platform with Xamarin Forms.
Using the Visual Studio editor, it now has "Structure Visualizer" feature that allows the user to hover the mouse on a closing brace, a tooltip will show the line of code above the opening brace. There is "Go to All" that can search for any file, type, member or symbol in a solution, a pop-up results windows will appear and allow access to filter by the type of reference.
There is "Run to Click" where users will have to hover the mouse over a line of code in break mode and click the "Run to Click" button. Another feature is the "Exception Helper" which is a non-modal Exception window that pops up if the user hits an exception in debug mode.
There is "Live unit testing" which can be found in the Enterprise edition where the user can view test and code coverage results while coding. Next is the "Lightweight solution load" which is an optional feature that loads projects in a solution on demand.
The "Git support" has been improved with support for push force, viewing commit difference, unset upstream branch, and SSH support. There is also this new feature called "Roaming Extensions" that allows the user to store preferred Visual extensions in the cloud and install it right away.
More Languages
There are also various programming languages that have been updated. C++ now supports C++ 11, C++ 14 and C++ 17. However, in the case of the C++ 17, it is only a preliminary support. The Visual Studio 2017 also supports C# 7.0 and Visual Basic 15. The F# is now at 4.1 and has a new Roslyn-based editor.
For people who uses Javascript, it has also been updated with improved IntelliSense and its TypeScript is now at version 2.1. Tools for Apache Cordora now feature Cordora Simulate and the Redgate Developer Tools Core Edition is now bundled in the Visual Studio 2017.
Lastly, for the cloud services, there is the Add Connected Service dialog which is the replacement of the Service Capabilities. Furthermore, users can now also add Microsoft or third-party services from the online Visual Studio marketplace.
