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.

Visual Studio has had support for High-DPI modes for some time. Visual Studio 2010 adopted WPF as its primary UI framework, which addressed many existing high-DPI issues. Some of our components which leverage Win32, however, had not been fully updated to incorporate high-DPI awareness. At the beginning of 2013, Microsoft shipped the Surface Pro which supported 210 pixels per inch and with a default DPI scaling of 150%. Later that year, 4k resolution displays debuted at CES in Las Vegas. We committed to making sure we were ready for these devices.