Visual Studio Blog
The official source of product insight from the Visual Studio Engineering Team
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New Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova Documentation Site and Beginner’s Guide
Earlier this summer, the Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova moved to an open documentation model to engage developers like you to help create an amazing hybrid mobile app development experience. We believed at that time that Apache Cordova was the future of mobile development, and we believe it now as we continue investing our efforts into transitioning web developers into high-quality mobile app makers. Part of Microsoft’s contribution to the Cordova community is the Visual Studio 2015 Tools for Apache Cordova. To give you the best possible experience with our product, we documented our tools on both t...
The Road Ahead for the Feedback Channels
In two earlier posts (Visual Studio Customer Feedback Channels and A Day in the Life of Visual Studio Send a Smile Feedback) we talked about the different ways you could send us feedback for Visual Studio 2015 and I shared what happens with your Send a Smile feedback once it gets to Microsoft. In this post, I’ll talk about how we’re thinking to make it easier to provide actionable feedback. We’ve also received all your input from the survey in the first post, and what you told us resonates with what we’ve heard from other customers. You also provided some great new thoughts about where to ...
Team Foundation Server 2015 Update 1 RC 1
Today we’ve released Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2015 Update 1 RC 1 (Release Candidate 1). This is the newest version of Team Foundation Server (TFS), the collaboration platform at the core of Microsoft's application lifecycle management (ALM) solution. There are many feature updates in this update. Here’s a short summary: This product is "go-live" meaning that you can use it in production environments. However, because this is still a pre-release, there may be some bugs that will be fixed by RTM. We will support upgrading this update from Update 1 RC 2 to Update 1 RTM, a...
Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 CTP
Today we released Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 CTP. Included, you’ll find: For a complete description of the improvements, bug fixes, and known issues in this release, see Description of Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 CTP. As always, we welcome your feedback. Share your feedback, suggestions, thoughts, and ideas on UserVoice , through the in-product Send-a-Smile UI, or file a bug through the Visual Studio Connect site.
Now available: Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova Update 3
Three weeks ago, we released Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova Update 2. Last week, we introduced you to a new TACO CLI. Now we’re back with Update 3, which is automatically included when you install Visual Studio 2015. If you’re an existing user of Visual Studio 2015, you’ll receive a notification to download and install today. This release significantly improves the tools’ stability by fixing 13 of the top issues reported on Stack Overflow. Here are three of the most notable changes reported by developers: What’s next? We’re hard at work already on the next ...
Update News: Tools for Universal Windows Apps 1.1.1, Visual Studio Emulator for Android, Tools for Apache Cordova Update 3
Tools for Universal Windows Apps 1.1.1: This update, which is what you’ll get with a new installation, fixes a bug in Tools for Universal Windows Apps 1.1 where Visual Studio failed to create a package for a UWP app that uses a WinRT component. You can find additional information and installation instructions in Generating Store associated package fails for a UWP application with a WinRT component (.winmd). Visual Studio Emulator for Android: By now, hopefully you’ve heard about the new Visual Studio Emulator for Android, which is available as a standalone download for Eclipse and Android Studi...
How Visual Studio gives Halfbrick ninja powers
For this post we welcome Nicholas Cornelius and Miguel Pastor from Halfbrick as guest authors on the Visual Studio Blog. Halfbrick games, including Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride, are released on multi platforms. To minimize per-platform overhead, our games are written primarily in C++ with only small portions of platform-specific code written in Java or Objective-C for Android and iOS, respectively. [Note: one can use 100% C++ on the Windows platform because it’s one of the supported languages for native app development, alongside C#, Visual Basic, and JavaScript—Ed.] For us, it’s hugely imp...
Announcing Tools for Apache Cordova (aka TACO) v1.0.0
We are excited to announce the first official (aka 1.0.0) release of the TACO CLI today! Tools for Apache Cordova (TACO, for short) provides number of utilities for Mac and Windows users to develop with a set of platforms and plugins validated by our Visual Studio product team. Developers can also install the native Android and iOS (Mac-only) SDKs and build tools & also connect to the Mac remote build server straight from the command line on their Windows and Linux machines. And to top it off, our TACO CLI is 100% Cordova CLI compatible. So if you know how to use Cordova CLI, you already know how to use us! A...
IntelliTest for .NET – Test More with Less (effort)
Writing a suit of unit tests that exhaustively exercise and validate the logic of the code under test is not easy. It can even be considered too expensive to do at all. Fortunately, the IntelliTest feature shipping in the Visual Studio 2015 Enterprise Edition addresses both concerns: it helps you achieve high code coverage at a fraction of the cost. When you run IntelliTest on your .NET code, it generates test cases by dynamically analyzing the code under test as it is running on the CLR. For every statement in the code, it crafts an input that will reach that statement, doing a case analysis for every condition...