Windows 10: Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2 Blog Rollup

Brink · Feb 15, 2019

Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2 was a huge release for us, so we’ve written a host of articles to explore the changes in more detail. For the short version, see the Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2 Release Notes.

What’s New in CMake

C++ Binary Compatibility and Pain-Free Upgrades

New Code Analysis Checks – use-after move and coroutine

Concurrency Code Analysis

Introducing the New CMake Project Settings UI

In-Editor Code Analysis

Productivity Improvements

Template IntelliSense Improvements

Backend Improvements: New Optimizations, OpenMP, and Build Throughput Improvements

Lifetime Checker Update

We’d love for you to download Visual Studio 2019 Preview, give it a try, and let us know how it’s working for you in the comments below or via email (L: visualcpp@microsoft.com). If you encounter problems or have a suggestion, please let us know through Help > Send Feedback > Report A Problem / Provide a Suggestion or via Visual Studio Developer Community. You can also find us on Twitter @VisualC.
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Source: Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2 Blog Rollup | Visual C++ Team Blog

See also: Visual Studio 2019 Launch Event on April 2 - Windows 10 Forums

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Brink · Feb 15, 2019

Visual Studio Roadmap Updates and Visual Studio 2019 Information

Yesterday, we covered What’s next for Visual Studio for Mac, and today we’ve updated our Visual Studio Roadmap so you can see the latest news about what we’re working on. We’re particularly excited to share this update since it includes information about the first preview of Visual Studio 2019, which we will make available by the end of this calendar year. We plan to have a generally available (GA) version of Visual Studio 2019 in the first half of 2019.

Be sure to check out the full roadmap for all the updates, but some notable improvements are:

A better performing and more reliable debugger, moving to an out-of-process 64-bit process.

Improved search accuracy for menus, commands, options, and installable components.

Visual Studio tooling for Windows Forms and WPF development on .NET Core 3.

As always, we are committed to making Visual Studio a great development environment: faster, more reliable, more productive for individuals and teams, and easier to get started with developing your code. Please continue to share your feedback with us so we can make the best tools for your development. You can send us your suggestions, ideas, and concerns through our Developer Community portal.

We will keep updating the roadmap as we deliver Visual Studio 2019 features iteratively. To try out the newest features and fixes, keep an eye on the Visual Studio Preview page and on this blog for announcements about the latest previews.

John Montgomery,
Director of Program Management for Visual Studio
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Source: Visual Studio Roadmap Updates and Visual Studio 2019 Information | The Visual Studio Blog

Brink · Feb 15, 2019

A preview of UX and UI changes in Visual Studio 2019

Over the years, we’ve learned that sharing the evolution of Visual Studio, with you – our users – early and often helps us to deliver the best possible experience for our community. We’re excited to share today that, as part of the development of Visual Studio 2019, we’ve been looking to refresh our theme, update our product icon and splash screens, and help you get to your code faster. I’d like to walk you through our thinking behind the changes and show off the resulting user experience that you’ll encounter every day. By leaving a comment below or suggesting a feature (or reporting a bug!) in Developer Community, you have a chance to provide input into the design of the product, early in the process.

Updating our product icon

Visual Studio 2017 icon (left) and the new Visual Studio 2019 icon (right)

The first change you might notice is the refresh of our product and preview icons. We work on improving our icons for each release of Visual Studio so that you can quickly spot which version of Visual Studio you’re opening and using. We caught some usability issues around the style of the icon in the early stages of releasing Visual Studio 2017 and we’re focused on addressing these issues for Visual Studio 2019.

One thing that came up was that the current icon’s flat style rendered it almost invisible against a background with a similar color. By adopting the Fluent Design System approach to depth, lighting, and materials, we’ve visually enhanced the icon so that it’s much more visible against a variety of backgrounds.

The new Visual Studio 2019 icon in the taskbar and start menu

We’re always learning about new situations and environments where the Visual Studio logo might appear. We keep improving its legibility, reducing the chance that it will get lost on a similar-colored background.

The Visual Studio 2019 release icon (left) next to the Visual Studio 2019 Preview icon (right)

Another challenge we faced was the difference between a Preview and final RTM version of Visual Studio. Our product icon is the obvious way for us to be able to communicate this difference, but this proved difficult with the Visual Studio 2017 icon set. For Visual Studio 2017, the icon was designed to be a part of the large Visual Studio Family. The method we used was to align all our icons with a consistent “ribbon” down the right side. However, this left less space for the identifying mark that distinguished the apps from one another.

For Visual Studio 2019, we started by removing any extra parts of the icon. We wanted to focus on the most recognizable element of the Visual Studio logo: namely, the infinity loop.

We increased the size of the infinity loop, which gave us more room and opportunity to show the difference between the Preview and Release icons. We’ve also taken a bolder approach to how we represent the Preview. By breaking the icon shape in a few places, we’ve maintained the overall shape of the Visual Studio icon. But we’re showing a distinct and accessible difference at the same time, suggesting a complete (if not production-ready) preview.

We’re working on a similar approach for the new Visual Studio for Mac icon that will debut in forthcoming Previews.

Easier to launch your code

start window for Visual Studio for Mac (left) and Visual Studio (right)

Through research and observation, we identified opportunities to simplify the choices that you must make during the most crucial steps of getting started with Visual Studio. We realized we needed to remove what we call “off-ramps” from the experience and provide you with the best paths forward to your code.

Whether you’re new to Visual Studio or a seasoned Visual Studio developer, the new start window gives you rapid access to the most common ways that developers access their code: cloning or checking out code, opening a project or solution, opening a local folder on PC, and creating a new project.

We know how important the list of recent projects and folders from the current IDE Start Page in Visual Studio 2017 is for you (more than 90 percent of you who use the Start Page also use the recent project lists), so we made sure to maintain its position as a focal point in the experience.

You’ll also find a new, streamlined, Git-first workflow that lets you clone public Git repos with just a few clicks.

Finally, we also reimagined the experience of creating a new project, with a new list of the most popular templates and improved search and filter capabilities. With the new design and step-by-step approach for selecting a template and configuring it, we believe that we have made it less overwhelming so that you can focus on a single decision at a time. You will also be able to explore other languages, platforms, and project types that Visual Studio supports and eventually be able to install them right from there.

A refreshed blue theme

The refreshed blue theme (left) next to the current blue theme (right)

One of the most noticeable visual impacts you may see when you run Visual Studio 2019 is our updated blue theme. More than half of you use the blue theme, but it’s looked the same since Visual studio 2012. We focused our changes around a desire to declutter the Visual Studio UI. By softening the edges around our icon buttons and toolbars, as well as tool-windows, we can bring forward the focus of what you’re working on. We’ve made small changes across the whole UI, which add up to a cleaner interface while still meeting our accessibility standards. We started with the blue theme so that we can get these updates in front of you, learn from your feedback, and then apply it across our other themes.

Productivity at your fingertips

The current commanding space (top) and the simplified version for Visual Studio 2019 (bottom)

Looking for opportunities to broaden the focus of the code and remove clutter, we started with the vertical space. By removing the title bar, we took the opportunity to reassess the uppermost layout of Visual Studio without drastically changing your workflow. We have moved the search UI to increase discoverability. With the upcoming preview releases and updates, you’ll find that search in Visual Studio 2019 is more powerful and accurate.

We now have a focused location for team collaboration using Live Share in the title bar. Grouped together close to the user account signed in to Visual Studio, it’s now easier to see who you’re collaborating with. This is built into all editions of Visual Studio. We’ve also taken the time to clean up the default iconography to align it better with Windows.

These small changes allow us to reclaim vital space in the IDE … allowing for larger tool windows, more space for your code, and faster access … to the tools and commands that matter to you.

Noticeable notifications

The new location, style, and icon for notifications for Visual Studio 2019. Coming in future Previews.

Early next year, one of our Preview releases will include an update to the notifications UI. Through conversations with you, we’ve heard that the current notifications location, icon, and states have been unclear to you for some time. To tackle this, we’re moving the entry point for notifications to the status bar at the bottom of the IDE. This new position avoids disruptive UI breaking your concentration, but sets us up for displaying messages from a variety of different services (from the status of a Live Share to a Pull Request comment) in the future. We’re also updating the icon from a flag to a bell, based on your comments.

An ongoing conversation

We’re excited to share these changes that we’ve been working on with you, and we’d love to hear your thoughts about our new designs, so please leave a comment below. You can also suggest a feature or file a bug in our Developer Community. We want to make Visual Studio better with every update and your feedback is critical.

Jamie Young,
Group Principal Design Manager
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Source: A preview of UX and UI changes in Visual Studio 2019 | The Visual Studio Blog

Brink · Feb 15, 2019

Microsoft announces availability of Visual Studio 2019 Preview 1

Today, in the Microsoft Connect(); 2018 keynote, Scott Guthrie announced the availability of Visual Studio 2019 Preview 1. This is the first preview of the next major version of Visual Studio. In this Preview, we’ve focused on a few key areas, such as making it faster to open and work with projects stored in git repositories, improving IntelliSense with Artificial Intelligence (AI) (a feature we call Visual Studio IntelliCode), and making it easier to collaborate with your teammates by integrating Live Share. With each preview, we’ll be adding capabilities, improving performance, and refining the user experience, and we absolutely want your feedback.

For a quick overview of the new functionality, you can keep reading this blog, or if you want a video overview, check out our team member Allison’s introduction to Visual Studio 2019. But before you do either, make sure to kick off the download.

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Enabling you to focus on your work

Right off the bat, you’ll notice that Visual Studio 2019 opens with a new start window on launch. This experience is better designed to work with today’s Git repositories – whether local repos or online Git repos on GitHub, Azure Repos, or elsewhere. Of course, you can still open an existing project or solution or create a new one. (This experience is also coming soon to Visual Studio 2019 for Mac.) We’ll have a more detailed blog post on the new start window experience next week, which will also go into some of the research that supported this revamp.

Visual Studio 2019 start window

Visual Studio 2019 for Mac start window

Once you’re in the IDE, you’ll notice a few changes to the UI and UX of Visual Studio 2019. Jamie Young recently published a blog post with more detail on these changes, but to recap, they include a new product icon, a refreshed blue theme with small changes across the UI to create a cleaner interface, and a more compact title and menu bar – for which we’ve heard your feedback loud and clear and are working to further optimize.

In addition to the enhancements Jamie mentions, today we’re sharing the new search experience in Visual Studio 2019, which replaces the existing “Quick Launch” box. You can now search for settings, commands, and install options. The new search experience is also smarter, as it supports fuzzy string searching to help find what you are looking for even when misspelled.

The new search experience in Visual Studio 2019

When you’re coding, Visual Studio 2019 makes it easier to get your work done quickly. We’ve started by focusing on code maintainability and consistency experiences in this preview. We’ve added new refactoring capabilities – such as changing for-loops to LINQ queries and converting tuples to named-structs – to make it even easier to keep your code in good shape. With the new document health indicator and code clean-up functionality, you can now easily identify and fix warnings and suggestions with the click of a button.

The document health indicator and code clean-up command

Common debugging task are also easier. You’ll immediately see that stepping performance is improved, allowing for a much smoother debugging experience. We’ve also added search capabilities to the Autos, Locals, and Watch windows helping you track down objects and values. Watch for a future blog post that goes deeper into the debugger improvements in Visual Studio 2019, including the new Time Travel Debugging for managed code feature (coming to a future Preview), updates to the Snapshot Debugger to target Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS), and better performance when debugging large C++ projects; thanks to an out-of-process 64-bit debugger.

Search in the Watch window

Helping your team work together

Building on the work we started in Visual Studio 2017, we’re improving Visual Studio IntelliCode, our context-aware and AI-powered IntelliSense, to enable training it on your own code repositories and share the results with your team. IntelliCode reduces the number of keystrokes you need since the completion lists are prioritized on the most common coding patterns for that API combined with the context of the code in your existing project. We’ll have a blog post on all the improvements in IntelliCode coming later this week, including more details on learning from your code, and C++ and XAML support being added for Visual Studio 2019.

Visual Studio IntelliCode using a trained model

Earlier this year, we introduced Visual Studio Live Share to help you collaborate in real-time with anyone across the globe using Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code. Live Share is installed by default with Visual Studio 2019, so you can immediately invite your teammates to join your coding session to take care of a bug or help make a quick change. You’ll also find it’s easier to start a session and view who you’re working within a dedicated space at the top-right of the user interface. We’ll also have a deeper-dive post on Visual Studio Live Share improvements in the next few days, including support for any project, app type, and language, Solution View for guests, and support for more collaboration scenarios.

Visual Studio Live Share integrated in Visual Studio 2019

Last, we’re introducing a brand-new pull request (PR) experience in Visual Studio 2019, which enables you to review, run, and even debug pull requests from your team without leaving the IDE. We support code in Azure Repos today but are going to expand to support GitHub and improve the overall experience. To get started, you can download the Pull Requests for Visual Studio extension from the Visual Studio Marketplace.

The new pull request experience in Visual Studio 2019

.NET Core 3 Preview 1

We also announced .NET Core 3 Preview 1 today, and Visual Studio 2019 will be the release to support building .NET Core 3 applications for any platform. Of course, we also continue to support and improve cross-platform C++ development, as well as .NET mobile development for iOS and Android with Xamarin.

.NET Core 3.0 development in Visual Studio 2019

Help us build the best Visual Studio yet

We are very thankful to have such an active community and can’t wait to hear what you think about Visual Studio 2019. Please help us make this the best Visual Studio yet by letting us know of any issues you run into by using the Report a Problem tool in Visual Studio. You can also head over to the Visual Studio Developer Community to track your issue or, even better, suggest a feature, ask questions, and find answers from others.

We will share more about the full feature set and SKU lineup of Visual Studio 2019 in the coming months as we release more previews. You can try Visual Studio 2019 side-by-side with your current installation of Visual Studio 2017, or if you want to give it a spin without installing it, check out the Visual Studio images on Azure.

I also want to take a moment to thank our vibrant extension ecosystem, who have made over 400 extensions available for Visual Studio 2019 Preview 1 already, and more are being added each day. You can find these extensions on the Visual Studio Marketplace.

Microsoft has always been a company with developers at the heart – we’re humbled that the community of users of the Visual Studio family has surpassed 12 million. We aim to make every second you spend coding more productive and delightful. Please continue to share your feedback on the preview for Visual Studio 2019 to help guide the future direction of the product so it becomes your favorite tool. Thank you!

John Montgomery,
Director of Program Management for Visual Studio
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Source: Making every developer more productive with Visual Studio 2019 | The Visual Studio Blog

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