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!
Comments
Anonymous
August 04, 2014
Congrats on the release! P.S., All of the update 3 download links point to update 2.Anonymous
August 04, 2014
@Blake - Thanks, the links on visualstudio.com will be updated soon - in the meantime you can download directly at www.microsoft.com/.../details.aspx.Anonymous
August 04, 2014
Hey folks, this is Dmitry from the Visual Studio team, sorry for the issues with the download but Soma did provide the right direct link and the issue should be resolved shortly anywhere it might be incorrect.Anonymous
August 04, 2014
As soon as Web Essentials is updated to work with the final (vs. RC) edition of VS 2013 Update 3, I'll install Update 3. Meanwhile, I wait patiently by the NuGet "phone" :-)Anonymous
August 04, 2014
You need to get to the remote tools. Those are still update 2 yet are proclaimed to be update 3.Anonymous
August 04, 2014
I have a premium MSDN subscription. So, this seems pretty useless to me as most of the things I think, "hey, that's really useful" are going in the Ultimate edition now. Please add some features for MSDN Premium or get a better plan for distributing at least some of these new features into premium.Anonymous
August 04, 2014
really great features in release 3, but what we really need is a UI breakthrough. Any you know what, it should be called WINDOWSAnonymous
August 04, 2014
The comment has been removedAnonymous
August 04, 2014
Thanks for mentioning when a feature is in the Ultimate edition only!Anonymous
August 04, 2014
Loving the new hybrid apps, awesome stuff!Anonymous
August 04, 2014
Here is a link for the offline installer iso: go.microsoft.com/fwlinkAnonymous
August 05, 2014
Now, this is awesome! Congratulations all.Anonymous
August 05, 2014
Visual Studio is the best!Anonymous
August 05, 2014
Is it the case that this update does NOT include support for Universal Apps built in Visual Basic? If so, is there any projected timeframe for synchronizing the level of support for Visual Basic? Or has there been some change with regards to the often stated policy about both languages (C# and VB) being supported to the same level?Anonymous
August 05, 2014
MVC3 project razor intellisense not longer working any more.Anonymous
August 05, 2014
After the update I'm having issues: forums.asp.net/.../5750463.aspxAnonymous
August 06, 2014
@Vincent, I'd like to get some additional information about the issue that you've encountered to investigate it further. Please send me an email at anhphan at Microsoft.com. Thanks!Anonymous
August 06, 2014
Are there any limitations developing mobile apps, using VS2013 Update 3, on a windows 7 PC as opposed to windows 8.1 PC? If so, what are they? bitFlinger@hotmail.comAnonymous
August 06, 2014
Awesome features :) cheers :)Anonymous
August 08, 2014
@bitFlinger - I'll gladly respond to your Hotmail account, but wanted to post an answer publicly so that all can share in the information :) My name is Ryan J. Salva and I'm Program Manager on the Hybrid Apps team in Visual Studio (i.e. Tools for Apache Cordova). You asked, "Are there any limitations developing mobile apps, using VS2013 Update 3, on a windows 7 PC as opposed to windows 8.1 PC? If so, what are they?" There are only two significant limitations using the Multi-Device Hybrid Apps CTP 2.0 extension. First, to install on Windows 7, you must first install PowerShell 3.0. We use PowerShell script during setup to run a system diagnostic check to understand what 3rd party dependencies you need to install (e.g. Java, Android SDK, NodeJS). While this adds an extra step to setup, it's a relatively minor one-time inconvenience and one we hope to remove in the future. Second, and perhaps more importantly, developers cannot build for Windows 8 or 8.1 (Store and Phone) on a Windows 7 machine. The Cordova platform provides a set of normalizing APIs to simplify mobile application development. However, it still requires native build support. Since Windows 7 doesn't have build support for Windows 8 and above, Cordova cannot build for those targets. You can still build for Android 2.3 and above (i.e. the versions supported by Cordova) because we install Java and the Android SDK. If you have an on-premise Mac, you can also build for iOS because you have access to Xcode's build system. Hope this helps and please let us know about your experience with the product. You can always email us for support at multidevicehybridapp@microsoft.com or ask questions on StackOverflow, stackoverflow.com/.../multi-device-hybrid-appsAnonymous
August 08, 2014
@bitFlinger - the one major capability not available on Windows 7 is building/emulating a Cordova app to a Win Phone 8 emulator.Anonymous
August 08, 2014
visual studio 2013 update 3 with windows phone 8.1 update 1 OR separately need to download windows phone 8.1 update 1Anonymous
September 14, 2014
Unfortunately creating a blank Cordova project with this CTP causes my instance of VS2013 to crash ('stop working'). Visual Studio Premium 2013 12.0.30723.00 Update 3 Win 8.1 32GB RAM Pity :(Anonymous
November 05, 2014
i have developed web based project in mvc5 now i need to convert it to mobile apllication like android. please tell me solution using cordoa