What's New in Visual Studio 2017 (RC)

Happy birthday VS

Do you know Visual Studio is turning 20 in this year? YES, Visual Studio is going to celebrate its 20^th birthday in this year.

The first edition of VS that is Visual Studio 97 was released on 28 JAN 1997, from that, VS has changed the way of development and tries to make it faster and more compatible.

It was the first product which assembles all languages under a single roof (like Visual C++, Visual Basic, Visual J++, Visual InterDev, Visual FoxPro, etc.)

Background

Over the years, VS has changed a lot, it now spans across Linux, Mac, Android, iOS to mobile and cloud first apps, it's just not an IDE but it is now a perfect development suite to fit all your new generation technology requirements, Microsoft has Just lunch VS Studio's new face, VS2017 on 7^th March 2017. Here is the Announcement.

Visual Studio 2017

VS2017 was initially referred as Visual Studio "15" and the first preview was launched on 30^th March, 2016, and on 16^th November, 2016, VS2017 RC was released. Basically, VS2017 is developed by keeping two things in mind.

1. Performance
2. Productivity

Performance Improvement

VS2017 has focus on performance improvements like Quick start of VS IDE, less memory consumption, more responsiveness, new setup experience, lower solution load time, on demand Python and Xamarin extensions loading and many more small but useful features.

Faster Visual Studio

Visual Studio 2017 comes up with a new performance check list, when VSloader feels your Visual Studio takes more time to load, it will give you a checklist of all extensions which take time to load your editor. You then uncheck them and load your Visual Studio immediately. It will avoid opening/running some tool on editor startup.

Quick Visual Studio Installation

Now VS installation will offer you to choose what you want to install, in which it provides 'workload' tab that has common languages, framework and platform (from R to F#). Here, you need to choose your working area and install your needed packages, so there is no need to install full Visual Studio.

Another way of installation is using 'Individual Components' in which you can pick your customized components and get it installed.

Do you want to install Visual Studio in a different language? Then without installing a different language at Windows level, here VS gives you an option to install your favorite language so in short, whatever you install, still it contains basic code editing support for more than 10 languages.

On-demand loading extensions

Earlier versions of Visual Studio load with all extensions and packages. On startup, it will slow down its loading performance, but VS2017 has the facility of 'On-demand loading extensions' in which you can select what you want to load in startup.
In this version MS has moved Python and Xamarin extensions in on-demand category, shortly they have planned to move more packages and extensions. To use these features, we have to use 'Manage Visual Studio performance' sub-menu in Help menu.

Shorter Solution Load Timing

Say if your solutions has 50 projects, it does not mean you are working on all projects at once, so here we can work with our project while other projects are loading. In short, we can start working on our project without waiting for other project to get loaded in solution.
This can be achieved by 'Light weight solution' option from Tools -> Options -> Project and solutions

Productivity Improvements

VS2017 has improved a lot interns of Intelligence, debugging, unit test like real time feature and dependency validation, it has direct support for Azure environment. Developers can build, configure, package, debug, and deploy applications from VS2017 IDE without any efforts

Mobile First Application

VS2017 really helps us to make mobile apps with very little effort. Xamrin gives direct support to build interactive mobile applications for Android, iOS and Windows. Additionally, Apache Cordova can be used to develop faster mobile apps.

Sign In Once For All

When you first time install your Visual Studio, you need to sign in Microsoft account that helps you keep connected and share your account with your O365, Azure and team services. Additionally, it helps you to stay updated with VS updates.

Get Your VS Anywhere You Want !

VS 2017 comes up with Roaming Extensions Manager that has the facility to save your favorite extension, that is easily available for you anywhere you go, it will help you to feel at home.
Extension manager can be found at Tools Menu > Extensions & Updates, and then click the Roaming Extension Manager.
Extension manager keeps track of all your extensions that has installed in your Visual Studio, but you can decide which extension you want in roaming list, so logically, you will get three types of icons in your extension list: Roamed Icon, Roamed & Installed Icon, Installed Icon.
Roamed icon says a roaming wish list but not installed on machine, Roamed & Installed Icon says a roaming wish list and installed on machine, whereas Installed Icon says a installed extensions but not in roaming wish list.

Live Unit Testing

This feature a new addition in Visual Studio. It is useful to improve developer productivity, software quality and code coverage (it is the area of code scope). Basically, it automatically executes/runs unit test cases on code (in the background) and shows up the result in runtime. It basically returns fail, pass and neutral result.

1. fail: Code is fail with at least one test case
2. pass: Code gets cleared all test cases
3. neutral: Code is not covered by any test case

These features are available for C#/VB projects for the .NET Framework, and it also support three test frameworks MSTest, xUnit, and NUnit.

Connect with GIT

This Visual Studio has inbuilt GIT connection, where you can commit and publish your projects with Git repositories, create branch and also revert it easily.

New Navigation Guide

This Visual Studio comes with improved UI features like vertical guidelines between loops, nested area and it is useful to identify the code loops. NavigateTo window is also improved with new features like additional filter characters.

Improved Visual C++

VS2017 RC as new welcome features for Visual C++. They have fixed number of bugs here, and bugs related tools and compiler that has been reported by online users.

Give Feedback Online

IN VS2017, you can easily give a suggestion or report a bug or give a feedback online and this can be done by ''give feedback' icon present in Visual Studio editor.

Debugger Improvement

This is the core area for each developer. In each new version of Visual Studio, the developer expects something new in this area. Here, you can debug a running code - either it exists on local device, remote device or an emulator like Android or Windows devices.

VS2017 introduces run to click option in which you need to click 'RunToClick' icon to the line to execute it. Here, you no longer need to set temporary break points. Now to view exception detail information, modal dialogs are replaced with non-modal dialog and you can have easy access to inner exceptions and other exception details.

Connect to Cloud

VS2017 has a cloud explorer in it so that you can easily Connect to Azure cloud services, databases and can have access to all Azure resources that you are subscribed for.

[image]

Improved Deployment

With VS2017, you can easily deploy application to Windows store, Sharepoint or your location.

Hope these features will help you to be more productive.

References

**All Visual Studio images [IDE Images Only] in this article are referred/picked from MSDN site.

Happy coding!