Introduction
This article explains what is new in Visual Studio 2017 and explains Visual Studio's history. It offers a basic idea of Visual Studio 2017.
History
Microsoft Visual Studio has released in different versions. Each version has advantages compared to the previous version. The diagram given below explains the history of a Visual Studio release.
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Event and Release Date
Visual Studio 2017 was released on March 7. On March 7th and 8th, the company provided online training to the developers for working on Visual Studio 2017. If you need to know about the release event and stay up to date in regards to the information about Visual Studio 2017, please go to the link here.
Visual Studio downloads
Visual Studio Community edition is a full IDE free for students and individual developers. Visual Studio Professional and Enterprise editions' free trial versions are available.
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We can download Community edition and another trial versions from the download page.
Compare Edition
We can compare Visual Studio Community, Visual Studio Professional, Visual Studio Enterprise, Visual Studio Test Professional and MSDN platforms. We can get to know what is different and which edition provides which features in the link, given below.
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We can install Visual Studio 2017 in offline mode. We can create an offline installation of Visual Studio 2015 and 2017. To know more details about offline installation, visit the MSDN link given below.
Features
There are many features available in Visual Studio 2017. Some of them are given below.
Improved Navigations
In Visual Studio 2017 improved navigation, we can go to quick navigation features, which are available. Go to Edit menu and you can see the Go To options.
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We can see the shortcut keys for all “Go To” options in the screenshots given. For example, if you type home, you can see the related files with the file paths, as shown below.
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Here, IntelliSence picking has very relative properties, lists, and so on. It is based on small and capital letters and is added to another, while one is filtered.
Find all references
We often use “Go To Definition” in Visual Studio to find the definition to class, methods, and keyword. The new feature is “Finding All Reference”.
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If right option is clicked on any classes or methods and you go to “Find All References”; you can see everything related to the option clicked. If you move the cursor, you can see the preview also.
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Breakpoint
Breakpoint has ben improved a lot in Visual Studio 2017. Normally, we go step by step but here, we can skip many lines, where moving to breakpoint directly specifies line, using “Run To Click”. We can see the screenshots.
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After the click, we can see the execute seconds. If click executes second, we can see the productivity for executing those lines using diagnostic tools. We can see how it looks in the below screenshots.
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Live Unit Testing
In Visual Studio 2017, an important feature is added - Live Unit Testing. We can create unit tests and test out the code live.
Go to Test >> Live Unit Testing >> Start. We can see screenshots below.
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Right-click on a method or any code and go create test and click OK.
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After clicking create unit test and ok, then one class file will open. A class file contains postfix “Tests”. For example, if we create unit testing for “Sample.cs” it means unit file will create “SampleTests.cs”. After opening the file, it immediately starts running background and starts the test.
Test Fail
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Test Success
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Mobile Development
Visual Studio 2017 is used to develop Android, iOS, and Windows mobile applications. Using C#, JavaScript and C++ it can build the mobile apps. It has high code reuse and native capabilities. We can test developed mobile apps easily.
We can create a cross-platform mobile application to support Android, iOS and Windows using XMAL in Visual Studio 2017. It is one of the best features.
Faster
Visual Studio 2017 is very fast. It has a faster startup, faster solution load, and faster build, and less memory consumption. Visual Studio 2017 is four times faster than Visual Studio 2015.
We can install it in a faster way compared to previous Visual Studio versions. We can install it in a minimum of four minutes. It is a lightweight component.
We can see the system requirement for installing Visual Studio 2017 in the below screenshots.
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Conclusion
This article explained basic information about Visual Studio 2017 and its features. It is very helpful to students and freshers. The next article will explain how to install Visual Studio 2017.