September 6, 2012

Deep Jump into Visual Studio 2012

Microsoft finally announced their excited version of Visual Studio with great look and some sort of changes in logo too. It’s time to start your engines, and begin downloading today! By adopting agile practices, and using IDE and ALM tools, Microsoft have been able to complete the release in half as many milestones this time around. Developing great apps for Windows 8 is an important goal of this release.

There are several good aspect to upgrade in case you’re still deciding whether to download Visual Studio 2012, or haven’t been keeping up with all the news about the release.

1. The user interface includes an updated look and feel, which is consistent with the latest Microsoft products, and designed to focus your attention on the code. The overall environment has been streamlined, including simplified toolbars, a lightweight Find dialog, and less tab clutter by previewing files rather than opening them during debugging. Using Quick Launch, you can now search the IDE for any menu or command.

2. It contains a variety of tools to create transparency between team members, reduce waste, and accelerate the flow of the project. As you set out to start the project, PowerPoint storyboarding is a useful way to communicate the requirements of the software. When you get further along, the Microsoft Feedback Client can be used to gather feedback on the working bits from external stakeholders. Team Foundation Server 2012 provides a rich toolset for planning out your sprints, managing the backlog, and tracking progress.

3. If you’re developing in C# or Visual Basic, you can take advantage of the language new features and .NET 4.5 for asynchronous programming. The C++ support includes the full C++ 11 standard library as well as new language features: stateless lambdas, SCARY iterators, range-based for loops, and scoped enumerations support. Visual C++ 11 also adds seamless access to Windows Runtime components through C++/CX as well as C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism (C++ AMP), which enables hardware acceleration for the execution of your data-parallel C++ code. Lastly, if you’re using F#, you’ll enjoy improvements for information-rich programming, which enable you to program directly against data services, and are made possible by F# type providers and LINQ queries.

4. It provide the latest advances in ASP.NET including web optimization improvements, new templates, HTML & CSS editor improvements, page inspector, and new publishing tools. Added new features to support JavaScript development including IntelliSense improvements, a new DOM explorer, and a JavaScript console.

5. It contains a variety of tools for developing business applications. SharePoint developers will find new designers for list and content types, new templates for site columns and Silverlight web pages, as well as new options for deploying SharePoint sites. ALM features like performance profiling, unit testing, and IntelliTrace are now available for SharePoint development. Client-side development has been improved as well, with support for JavaScript debugging and IntelliSense.

6. It provides the best possible tools to develop your cloud services. You’ll notice cloud tooling improvements including support for distributed caching, new publishing options, new templates, and a lower install footprint. Using Team Foundation Service with Windows Azure, you can now achieve continuous integration and continuous deployment of your software.

7. It contains all the tools you need to develop killer apps for Windows 8, from templates, to designers, to testing, to debugging. Using these tools, you’ll find everything you need to develop a great app and submit it to the Windows Store.

8. It will provide support for developing Windows Phone 8 applications. Some new features to look forward to include native C++ support, the ability to target both Windows Phone 7.x and Windows Phone 8 applications, multi-chassis support, and enterprise publishing.

9. It includes graphics tools to help game developers become more productive, making it easier to build innovative games. From debugging DirectX graphics, to designing and coding DirectX shaders, to inspecting and manipulating graphics assets, It provides all the functionality you need to build graphically rich 2D/3D applications.

10. Microsoft Test Manager 2012 has been enhanced to embrace exploratory testing, which allows you to explore the product in any way you want while keeping relevant steps and data that can be used to directly file bugs and feedback.

Quick Tour of Visual Studio's new features... 

1. Code Window Re-size

In this feature, you can turn on/off automatic re-sizing of window. When you are editing, selecting the         code window maximize at its expense of Solution Explorer, Output Panel etc.

2. Edit Code When It Executes

After a long time, finally you can do it in VS 2012. While the code is executing, you can pause it (breakpoint / debugging) and modify the code. The compiler will carry on working with the code you just wrote.

3. Google It!

They made your life easier, Microsoft add button on an exception message box named as Google It. Using this button you can directly search why that error/exception occurs. No need to copy or paste the code.

4. Automatically Send Semicolon

Rumor has it that the compiler automatically add semicolon and braces in your code if ever you forgot it.

5. Advance Copy and Pasting Code

To make your life easier, new version will apply some sense to the pasted code. Simply write your stub method. Try to search the code you need. Once you have it, simply copy the code and paste it into your stub method. Then the magic begins. The compiler has recognized and wired up your connection string, replaced "textBox1.Text" with "term", and because you are returning a string from this method, it assumes that you want the first result from the table and so will suggest returning that for you.

6. Evil Code Monkey

After copying and pasting code, things can get pretty messy really quickly. IntelliSense now includes Evil Code Monkey which will point out your ugly code, shaming you into the correct way to write it.

As you can see, there are a ton of new capabilities in this release, which is now the best version of Visual Studio that Microsoft have ever shipped.

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