Visual Studio Blog

The official source of product insight from the Visual Studio Engineering Team

April 2016 - Visual Studio Blog

News from Xamarin Evolve: What’s next for Visual Studio and Xamarin

April 27, 2016 Apr 27, 2016 04/27/16
Visual Studio Blog
Less than a month ago, at //BUILD, we announced the integration of Xamarin technology into our Visual Studio product line, furthering our Any Developer, Any App, Any Platform approach and bringing even more power and productivity to the nearly 13 million devs who have already downloaded Visual Studio 2015 and the 10 million who have downloaded...

The Latest of Microsoft Office Developer Tools: Office Add-in Commands and SharePoint 2016 Support

April 26, 2016 Apr 26, 2016 04/26/16
Visual Studio Blog
Office’s message at Build was loud and clear: Office is an open market for developers who want to reinvent productivity, backed by a consumer base of 1.2 billion users. Qi Lu welcomed developers to the Office ecosystem in his Build keynote, and showcased new robust extensibility features that enable you to create custom experiences in Office...

Anatomy of a Low Impact Visual Studio Install

April 25, 2016 Apr 25, 2016 04/25/16
Visual Studio Blog
At //build 2016, Microsoft announced the first public preview of a quick way to get Visual Studio “15” Preview. We’ve previously shared posts about what we’re building and why: In building faster ways of getting VS, we needed to reduce the size of the minimum product, change a bit of the way the IDE itself ran, change the way ...

Anatomy of a Low Impact Visual Studio Install

April 25, 2016 Apr 25, 2016 04/25/16
Art Leonard
In building faster ways of getting VS, we needed to reduce the size of the minimum product, change a bit of the way the IDE itself ran, change the way components are installed on your computer, and reduce the way components can impact your system. In this article, I will share a little about what it took to make this come together.

A Side-by-Side Comparison of Mobile-App Development Solutions

April 22, 2016 Apr 22, 2016 04/22/16
Visual Studio Blog
The world of mobile app development has been bursting at the seams with opportunities these last few years, as companies look for the next horizon of productivity gains and new revenue streams to fuel their growth. But along with the opportunities tied to each mobile platform comes the responsibility of ensuring a secure and seamless ...

Improving the C++ Developer Experience in Visual Studio 2015

April 13, 2016 Apr 13, 2016 04/13/16
Visual Studio Blog
Harness the speed, performance and portability of modern C++ with the power of Visual Studio 2015 Update 2. This release includes remote debugging on Linux devices, additional support for targeting Android and iOS (and Windows), a state of the art C++ coding experience, faster builds, support for modern C++ and all the power of the Visual ...

Open Any Folder with Visual Studio “15” Preview

April 12, 2016 Apr 12, 2016 04/12/16
Visual Studio Blog
For developers to be truly productive in Visual Studio their code needs to be organized into Solutions and projects, right? For a long time, that was a core expectation of how Visual Studio works. Unfortunately, this requirement is a bit of a burden for those of you working across multiple tools and platforms. Sometimes Solutions make a lot ...

What’s new in VS 2015 Update 2 for Universal Windows developers

April 11, 2016 Apr 11, 2016 04/11/16
Visual Studio Blog
At //BUILD/, we announced the availability of Visual Studio 2015 Update 2 that includes a significant update to the tools for building Universal Windows apps. These tools now support building apps for many new classes of Windows 10 devices such XBOX, HoloLens, and Surface Hub (in addition to Phone, PC, and IOT). Today, we are releasing yet ...

What’s new in VS 2015 Update 2 for Universal Windows developers

April 11, 2016 Apr 11, 2016 04/11/16
Visual Studio Blog
At //BUILD/, we announced the availability of Visual Studio 2015 Update 2 that includes a significant update to the tools for building Universal Windows apps. These tools now support building apps for many new classes of Windows 10 devices such XBOX, HoloLens, and Surface Hub (in addition to Phone, PC, and IOT). Today, we are releasing yet ...

Previewing Salsa – the New JavaScript Language Service in Visual Studio “15”

April 8, 2016 Apr 8, 2016 04/8/16
Visual Studio Blog
The new JavaScript language service, codenamed "Salsa", is now available in Visual Studio "15" Preview. Language services are responsible for providing syntax highlighting, completion lists, signature help, and other tooling features for a specific language inside the IDE. Salsa delivers many improvements over the existing JavaScript language ...