Visual Studio Online

Visual Studio Online

Visual Studio Online (VSO) is a cloud based offering from Microsoft for teams that are developing software. It includes foundation services like source repository, tools for project planning and tracking and execution of build for Continuous Integration. Since Team Foundation Service (TFS) is in the cloud, teams can start working on these features without spending any time in installation and configuration.The infrastructure provisioning and maintenance required for these services is taken care of by Microsoft. 

Visual Studio Online connects to Visual Studio, Eclipse, Xcode, and other Git clients to support development for a variety of platforms and languages. Each Visual Studio Online account comes with five free users. As your team expands or your needs grow, mix and match user plans and resources to give each user what they need. Visual Studio with MSDN subscribers are free to join account projects exclusive of the included five free users.

Host your code in the cloud (Code Repository)

Host your code in the cloud to access it anytime, anywhere. Pick a traditional, centralized version control system using Team Foundation Version Control, or if you prefer a distributed approach, use Git repository. Whether you need to support a few, or a few thousand developers, host your source control in the cloud with advanced branching, merging and visualization capabilities.

Manage your work in one place (Agile Portfolio Management)

Manage your project in the cloud, too. Quickly plan, manage, and track work across all your backlogs and teams with easy-to-use, fully integrated tools for agile planning and portfolio management.

Build your applications in the cloud (Continuous Integration)

Create and manage build processes that automatically compile and test your applications in the cloud, either on demand or as part of an automated continuous integration strategy. Automate your cloud builds to run nightly or after every check-in to ensure your code builds and is ready for deployment.

Gain insight into your applications

Visual Studio Online Application Insights is a new cloud-based service (currently in preview) that collects rich operational, performance, and customer usage information from client/device apps or server applications – whether they run on-premises, in Microsoft Azure, a third-party cloud provider, or a combination of all three. See how your application is behaving behind the scenes and pinpoint bottlenecks with rich dashboards that allow you identify potential issues.

You can download Visual Studio online from here. 

Performance and Diagnostics Hub in Visual Studio 2013

Performance and Diagnostics Hub in Visual Studio 2013

The new Performance and Diagnostics hub in Visual Studio 2013 Preview provides a unified experience for various tools available in Visual Studio. The hub also makes it easy to identify the performance and diagnostic tools that work with your project and enables you to quickly start using them to improve your application.

How to Access from Visual Studio 2013:

It can be opened by clicking on “Performance and Diagnostics” from the Debug or Analyze menu.

New and Improved Profiling Tools

In this release we have not only moved our existing profiling tools into the hub, but also added some new ones along the way! Among the various profiling targets, you will see the following tools available in Visual Studio 2013:

• JavaScript Memory. First introduced in Visual Studio 2012 Update 1, this tool helps you understand memory usage and find memory leaks in JavaScript Windows Store apps. For more information, be sure to check out JavaScript memory analysis for Windows Store apps in Visual Studio 2012.
• HTML UI Responsiveness. First introduced in Visual Studio 2012 Update 2, this tool helps you isolate UI responsiveness problems in JavaScript Windows Store apps by providing rich visualizations of work being done on the UI thread. For more information, be sure to check out HTML UI Responsiveness tool in Visual Studio 2013.
• XAML UI Responsiveness. New in Visual Studio 2013, this tool helps you understand UI responsiveness problems in C#/XAML and C++/XAML Windows Store apps by providing rich visualizations of work being done on the UI thread. For more information, be sure to check out XAML UI Responsiveness tool in Visual Studio 2013.
• Energy Consumption. New in Visual Studio 2013, this tool enables you to estimate your app’s energy consumption without the need for any specialized hardware. For more information, be sure to check out Energy Consumption tool in Visual Studio 2013.

Download: Channel9 MP3

Visual Studio 2013 New Editor Features

Visual Studio 2013 New Editor Features:

Peek Definition

Peek Definition is one such feature that allows you to view definitions inline in the Editor without having to open a new document tab. To see it in action, right click on a symbol and click on the “Peek Definition” command in the context menu or invoke the keyboard shortcut Alt + F12.

Enhanced Scrollbar

The Enhanced Scrollbar has been one of the most popular Productivity Power Tools extensions and is now part of the Visual Studio 2013 product! The Enhanced Scrollbar provides you visual cues about your file on the vertical scrollbar. Markers on the scrollbar allow you to quickly view the location of errors, warnings, breakpoints, bookmarks, find results and other useful information in your file. Here, too, we focus on bringing information to your fingertips – you don’t have to scroll away from your current position to get information about other parts of your file.

Map Mode

Microosoft added a “Map mode” to the scrollbar which gives you some cool features, each of which you can customize:

1. 10,000 feet view of the code – a high level view of the code is overlaid on the scrollbar helping you understand the structure of the code in a glance.
2. Single click to scroll – clicking on any region of the scrollbar immediately takes you to that location in the file – this is a quick way to get to any location in your file.
3. Preview of a section of your file – hovering on any section of the scrollbar show a live preview of that part of the file inside a tooltip. This is handy when examining interesting parts of your file

Navigate To (Ctrl+,)

Using the new Navigate To, you type in any part of a symbol and can find its definition, using smart semantic search. You can also type in part of a file name in your solution and quickly switch to it, regardless of whether or not it was previously open.

Auto Brace Complete

The Auto brace complete feature automatically adds closing parenthesis, quotes, braces and brackets for you as you type code in the Editor. This was one of the popular Productivity Power Tools Features that we decided to include in the Visual Studio 2013.

Move Line Up/ Down (Alt Arrow-Up/ Arrow-Down)

Move Line Up/ Down feature allows you to quickly move single or multiple lines up and down using the keyboard shortcut Alt + Up Arrow and Alt + Down Arrow. This was another popular extension from Productivity Power Tools that we decided to bring forward for this release.

New IDE Features for JavaScript

In JavaScript, we added identifier highlighting - now when you select an identifier, such as a variable name or function call, references to it are highlighted in the current source file. We also added a new navigation bar that appears at the top of the editor window so you can more easily move through the primary functions and objects in your JavaScript source.

You can find complete list here.