Visual Studio 2013 Update 3, Azure SDK 2.4, Windows Phone 8.1 Update and Apache Cordova Tools CTP 2

Today I am excited to announce the release of three important updates for Visual Studio developers. 

  • Visual Studio 2013 Update 3 a feature-filled update for all Visual Studio 2013 users.
  • Azure SDK 2.4 an updated SDK of Azure tools for Visual Studio developers to take advantage of the cloud for infrastructure, platform, and dev/test services.
  • Windows Phone 8.1 Update including new emulators to help developers test their apps on the latest Windows Phone 8.1 release.
  • Multi-Device Hybrid Apps CTP 2.0 and update preview release oftools for Visual Studio for building iOS, Android and Windows apps with HTML and JavaScript using the Apache Cordova™ framework.

Together, these releases reflect our focus on continuously delivering great new features and improvements for Visual Studio 2013 users and on continuing our investment in Visual Studio’s tools for mobile-first, cloud-first application development.

Visual Studio 2013 Update 3

Visual Studio 2013 Update 3 is now generally available for download, and will soon be pushed as an update for Visual Studio 2013 users. 

Update 3 brings tons of new features for Visual Studio developers: Application Insights integration for new and existing projects, CodeLens supports for Git, multi-monitor support for Windows Store app development, test plan customization with TFS 2013 Update 3, View Source support in the CPU Usage diagnostics tool,  improvements to Code Map, Azure WebJobs integration, new Windows Phone emulators and much more.

Check out the Update 3 overview video below and the full release notes for complete details.

Application Lifecycle

The CodeLens feature in Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate provides information about a declaration in C# or VB source code directly at the point of attention, based on local information as well as source control data.  In Update 3, support for Git source control has been added, making it easy to track commits related to a class or method.  This works with any Git repo: local, Git in TFS, or cloned from other services such as GitHub.

Understanding how your applications are being used and how they are performing is critical for any project. With Visual Studio 2013 Update 3, Application Insights is now part of Visual Studio, and can be integrated into your Web and Store projects directly from the New Project dialog (for new projects) or the solution explorer (for existing applications).

 

Diagnostics

Memory usage is a critical component of delivering great mobile app performance.  Visual Studio 2013 introduced a new Memory Usage diagnostics tool for Windows Store and Windows Phone Store applications.  In Update 3, this tool has been extended to support WPF and Win32 application.

Code Maps are a Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate feature that allows you to map relationships in complex code bases to gain insights on application structure and architecture.  In Update 3, Code Maps have improved zoom controls, the ability to create maps from DLLs, and color-coded links to more quickly understand relationships.

 

Web and Azure

A custom JSON editor was added to Visual Studio 2013 Update 2, with support for colorization, syntax errors reporting, outlining and JSON Schema.  In Update 3, the JSON editor now also supports formatting and brace matching.

Azure WebJobs make it simple to run any console application as a scheduled or on-demand job in Azure.    In Update 3, WebJobs support is now integrated into Visual Studio, available from the Solution Explorer for any console application.

For more details on all of these features and more in Visual Studio 2013 Update 3, see the Visual Studio blog.

Azure SDK 2.4

The Azure SDK 2.4 is available now for both Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio 2013.

For Virtual Machines, Visual Studio developers can now configure and create snapshots, create new virtual machines from saved snapshots, and remote debug 32-bit virtual machines.  And for Storage, developers can now get read access to geo-redundant storage, and can view storage activity logs. 

For more details, see the Azure blog.

Multi-Device Hybrid Apps

In June we released a first preview of Apache Cordova tools for Visual Studio.  These tools provide an end-to-end development experience in Visual Studio for building Android, iOS and Windows applications using HTML and JavaScript with the Apache Cordova framework.

Today, we are releasing an updated CTP2 of the Multi-Device Hybrid Apps tools.  CTP2 includes support for developers on Windows 7 desktops, debugging support for Android <4.4 and across-the-board quality, reliability and performance improvements.

For more details, see the post on the Visual Studio blog.

Summary

Today’s releases deliver new features and improvements for every Visual Studio 2013 developer, along with a particular focus on mobile-first, cloud first development with Visual Studio. Visual Studio 2013 Update 3, Azure SDK 2.4, Windows Phone 8.1 emulators and the Multi-Device Hybrid Apps CTP 2.0 tools are all available for download now.

Namaste!