The goal of DevOps is to continuously deliver value.  Using deployment slots can allow you to do this with zero downtime. In the Azure Portal, in the Azure App Service resource blade for your Web App, you can add a deployment slot by navigating to “Deployment slots,” adding a slot, and giving the slot a name. The deployment slot has its own hostnam...

Leverage the full power of C++ to build high-end games powered by DirectX to run on a variety of devices in the Windows family, including desktops, tablets, and phones. In this blog post we will dive into DirectX development with C++ in Visual Studio. First we’ll look at how to acquire the tools needed for DirectX desktop and Universal Windows Plat...

Xamarin.Forms gets better, faster, and more performant with each release, making it easier for developers to build amazing Android, iOS, and UWP apps from a single codebase. You can learn about all of the exciting updates in our latest release in my upcoming demo-packed webinar, Getting the Most Out of Xamarin.Forms for Visual Studio 2017, on Tuesd...

If you remember back to 2013 (and before), we released standalone installers for Team Explorer. In VS 2015, we did not release a standalone Team Explorer since customers had free options with Express SKUs and Community, which included Team Explorer functionality. Customers have continued to request a standalone installer for Team Explorer for non-d...

Your company’s apps may not be hosted in the cloud yet for various reasons, such as their configuration, dependencies, or network requirements. That’s okay!   What many people don’t know is that you can still take advantage of great tools like Visual Studio Team Services or Team Foundation Server to manage your deployments.  You’re probably asking ...

Today, we are announcing the release of the .NET Framework 4.7. It’s included in the Windows 10 Creators Update. We’ve added support for targeting the .NET Framework 4.7 in Visual Studio 2017, also updated today. The .NET Framework 4.7 will be released for additional Windows versions soon. We’ll make an announcement when we have the final date.

I’m excited to announce a new integrated portal experience for Azure Functions. Previously, there was somewhat disjoint experience between Function Apps and App Service. For many management operations, customers had to navigate to the App Service resource blade, and we heard feedback that customers wanted a more integrated and streamlined experienc...

Your continuous delivery pipeline typically consists of multiple environments. You may want to deploy changes first to a test or staging environment before deploying to a production environment. Furthermore, your production environment may itself comprise of multiple scale units, each of which you may deploy in parallel or one after the other for a...

Today, we’re excited to announce the latest stable release of Xamarin.Forms, version 2.3.4.224. The major themes of this release are quality and performance. For the complete list of updates, as well as some important notes, be sure to review the full release notes here.

The UWP Community Toolkit is on its fourth release today. The previous version was packed with new controls, so we decided to focus on stabilizations and improvements on existing controls and services in version 1.4.