Visual Studio Blog
The official source of product insight from the Visual Studio Engineering Team
Latest posts
Building Windows Phone 8.1 Apps in HTML
Last week at the BUILD conference, we announced that you can now build apps for Windows Phone 8.1 using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript using much the same techniques you use for building Windows 8.1 Store apps today. To help you build these apps, we’ve made many improvements to Visual Studio 2013 and Blend for Visual Studio 2013. In this post, we highlight a handful of the cool and new improvements that you might find useful, with a particular focus on the universal Windows app technology. Universal Apps With the latest updates to Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1, you can create universal Windows apps for a common ...
The Release Candidate for Visual Studio 2013 Update 2
Release candidate of Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 is now available to download. This update supports TFS 2013 Update 2 RTM as well as the Windows 8.1 Update 1 and Windows Phone 8.1 platform releases announced yesterday. Checkout Somasegar’s blog where he talks about these new releases, the .NET Native preview release, TypeScript 1.0 and more. Brian Harry’s post has highlights of what’s new in the TFS 2013 Update 2 RTM release. To learn more about the Windows updates checkout the Windows Blogs. If you missed watching the keynotes at BUILD you can catch the recordings of the keynotes and other sessions on Channel 9....
Windows Embedded Compact 2013 now available for Visual Studio 2013
As announced recently on the Windows Embedded blog, the Windows Embedded Compact 2013 product is now generally available. This update release includes integration to the latest Visual Studio 2013 through updated platform builder and application builder, inbox WiFi device driver for TI SDP44xx and debugging features. Visual Studio 2013 provides a modern development environment for creating the state-of-the-art, next-generation applications for devices and services. With Visual Studio, Microsoft continues to add value with ability to develop applications with greater agility, higher scale and improved quality. A...
Improving High-DPI support for Visual Studio 2013
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.
Blend for HTML Behaviors and Actions
Blend for Visual Studio 2013 introduces a feature to HTML developers that may be familiar to those who already work with XAML: Behaviors. When attached to HTML elements, Behaviors add life to an application by executing a JavaScript event handler. Developers can choose from a wide variety of ready-to-use Behaviors or create their own. For example, a developer might use Blend’s pre-defined “Toggle ClassName” behavior to start/stop a CSS animation by adding or removing a class name to an element when a button is clicked. In this post, we’ll take a behind-the-scenes look at the product team&...
Announcing Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2013 – March 2014 Update
Today at SharePoint Conference 2014, we are thrilled to announce that Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2013 – March 2014 Update is available to download! The March 2014 Update ships with a ton of new features that improves support for Office 365 Cloud Business App and apps for Office/SharePoint in Visual Studio 2013. Download the Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2013 – March 2014 Update It also allows you to build new types of apps for Office that are enabled in Office 2013 SP1 and Office 365. In addition, “Napa” Office 365 Development Tools is also being updated, which means you can start b...
Visual Studio Online early adoption period extended!
When we announced Visual Studio Online back in November of 2013 , we wanted to thank all those developers who trusted the service from the beginning—ever since the early Team Foundation Service bits were deployed. That’s why we decided that all of the Visual Studio Online early adopters should enjoy the service without limitation until March 14, 2014. Well… plans change, and we have good news! We’re extending the early adoption period from March 14th to May 7th, so we can focus on delivering additional updates to Visual Studio Online over the next few months (did you check in your profile to receive info about...
Try the Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 CTP 2
The Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 CTP 2 is ready for you to download and try. Our team remains committed to delivering regular improvements to Visual Studio 2013 through new capabilities and bug fixes. The update for Visual Studio 2013 offers improvements in a number of areas including Team Foundation Server, testing tools, the debugger, Entity Framework tooling, and web tools. For an overview of what’s new in the in the second update for Visual Studio 2013 go to the KB Article or visit Soma’s Blog. This is a preview release of the upcoming Visual Studio 2013 Update for you to try out early. We’ll send a remi...
Introducing Bing Code Search for C#
Download the extension now from the Visual Studio Gallery Update: For the folks who have extensions that replace the Visual Studio IntelliSense experience, you can still access the feature using 'ALT-A' as a shortcut or assign the 'Tools.LaunchSnippetSearch' command to a shortcut of your choosing (under Tools->Options->Environment->Keyboard) Imagine wanting to read a file line by line, and process those lines. Today, we’d most likely load up a web browser, visit our favorite search engine, and start crafting a well-designed set of keywords that helps the search engine understand the problem we&rsqu...