Getting Started WIth Visual Studio 2013 CTP 2 Update

Introduction

Today I am explaining that the Visual Studio team has announced the new release of Visual Studio, Community Technology Preview 2 (CTP2) of Visual Studio 2013 Update 2. There are various new and essential features are added in this release and some bugs are also fixed. The improvemetns for development will definitely help developers.

So, let's have a look at the following features that are upgraded in this release:

• Visual Studio 2013 Start Page
• Remote Azure Resources in One ASP.NET Wizard
• New Project Item
• Editor for JSON and SASS
• ASP.NET Scaffolding
• Knockout Intellisense Upgrade
• New URL Picker in HTML, Razor and CSS
• New Browser Link Feature
• Other Updates

Prerequisites

Now to get this, you download the CTP2 Visual Studio 2013 Update. To get the benefit of the latest features defined above you need to download this update. While updating the Visual Studio, various new features are installed. Have a look.

Visual Studio 2013 Start Page

Now you have the updated version of Visual Studio 2013. You will find that you can directly connect the Windows Azure from the Start page of Visual Studio 2013. The Start page is shown below:

Remote Azure Resources in One ASP.NET Wizard

The Visual Studio team added a Windows Azure "Create remote resources" checkbox to the One ASP.NET wizard when creating new application project templates. Now you can get the benefit of creating a new application and setting up the Windows Azure publishing site for testing and easily create a publishing profile.

Note: If you do not have a subscription to Windows Azure, then please uncheck the Create remote resources.

New Project Item

Now the LESS is added in the Visual Studio 2013 RTM and SASS project item and JSON File item is added yo the New Project Item wizard. The SASS editor features are comparable to LESS editor including colorization, variable and Mixins IntelliSense, comment and uncomment, quick info, formatting, syntax validation, outlining, Go to Definition, color picker and so on.

Editor for SASS and JSON

As you saw, JSON and SASS project items have been added to Visual Studio, therefore you can define the content for JSON like colorization, syntax validation and brace completion (automatic) and so on.

SASS Editor:

JSON Editor:

ASP.NET Scaffolding

If you use Enum support in the Models, the MVC Scaffolder will generate the dropdown for Enum. This uses the Enum helpers in MVC. You can get the updated Editor for Templates in the Scaffolding using the classes of Bootstrap. MVC and the Web API Scaffolders will add the latest versions of MVC and the Web API, version 5.1.

The newly added Enum Support in MVC when scaffolding the controller using Entity Framework is as in the following:

Note: In the previous version, we had to modify the Editorfor template to the Dropdownlistfor template. Check out the Enum Support in MVC.

Knockout Intellisense Upgrade

A non-standard Knockout syntax hs been added for Visual Studio Intellisense, "ko-vs-editor viewModel". It binds to multiple view models on a page using comments in the form.

New URL Picker in HTML, Razor and CSS

Visual Studio 2013 was shipped with no URL picker outside of WebForm pages. The new URL picker for HTML, Razor, CSS, LESS and SASS editors is dialog-free that understands '...' and filters file lists suitably for images and links.

The HTML editor:

The CSS editor:

New Browser Link Feature

Now the Browser link supports HTTPS connections and creates a list on the Dashboard with other connections as long as the certificate is trusted by the browser.

Other Updates

There are many other updates also available, given below.

ASP.NET Web Forms

The ASP.NET Web Forms project template based web application now shows how to do Account Confirmation and Password Reset for the ASP.NET Identity.

ASP.NET Identity

The 2.0-alpha1 version of ASP.NET Identity is associated with the new project templates and you can also work with the new release of Identity and 2.0-Beta 1 with which you can perform the Two Factor Authentication.

NuGet

The latest NuGet 2.8 version is installed in this release. You can get the latest update for the NuGet Package Manager from "Tools" -> "Extensions and Updates".

ASP.NET SignalR

The latest version of ASP.NET SignalR 2.0.2 is included in this release.

OWIN Components

The stable version OWIN 2.0.2 is integrated into this version and you can also upgrade it into the 2.1.0 version.

Entity Framework

The Entity Framework 6.1.0-alpha 1 version is included in the project templates and you can upgrade it into the 6.1.0-beta1 version.

MVC 5.1.1 and Web API 2.1.1

The MVC 5.1.1 and Web API 2.1.1 and Web Pages 3.1.1 are included in this release with some bug fixes.

Summary

This article described various new features and updates available for download and use in the Visual Studio 2013 CTP2 update. Thanks for reading this article and Stay Updated.