ANNOUNCING VISUAL STUDIO 2012 UPDATE 2 CTP 2

We are excited to announce the availability of the CTP of Visual Studio 2012 Update 2, as it bring forwards a number of improvements for the XAML developer. The following are some of the key improvements you will find in this release:

  • WPF, SILVERLIGHT AND SKETCHFLOW SUPPORT IN BLEND
    Blend for Visual Studio now support WPF, Silverlight and SketchFlow projects in the same version of Blend (support for these was previously available only as a standalone Preview release of Blend). With this CTP release, Blend now supports developing Windows Store, Windows Phone, WPF and Silverlight apps without needing to have multiple versions of Blend on the same machine.

 

  • ILLUSTRATOR AND PHOTOSHOP IMPORT SUPPORT FOR WINDOWS STORE XAML APPS
    Blend now allows you to import Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop files into Windows Store XAML apps, using the same workflows that you have been familiar with in WPF, Silverlight and Windows Phone. In addition, we have also enabled copying and pasting graphics from Illustrator directly into your XAML design surface.

 

  • PERFORMANCE AND RELIABILITY
    We have been actively working on improving the performance and reliability of using the XAML design surfaces in Visual Studio and Blend, as well as the XAML editor in VS. While our work is not yet complete, we have addressed a significant amount of feedback that we received in this release – particularly in areas where the XAML designer would take a long time to load for large projects. The following is a quick sampling of areas where you might see improvements in this release.

Download link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36508

Source:https://blendinsider.com/technical/announcing-visual-studio-2012-update-2-ctp-2013-01-30/