Today we released Update 3 for Visual Studio 2013 (you can read more on Brian Harry’s blog and Soma’s blog). To upgrade you can either download the update or install a full version of Visual Studio 2013 with Update 3 already installed from these links:

• Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate with Update 3
• Visual Studio 2013 Premium with Update 3
• Visual Studio 2013 Professional with Update 3
• Visual Studio 2013 Windows Express with Update 3
• Visual Studio 2013 Web Express with Update 3
• Visual Studio 2013 Desktop Express with Update 3

In addition to new features, this update also offers reliability fixes and bug fixes, including:

• CodeLens. CodeLens is an editor productivity feature available in Visual Studio Ultimate; with this update, CodeLens can show authors and changes to files that are in Git repositories. If you use Git for source control and TFS for work item tracking, CodeLens work item indicators now provide information about work items associated with a method or class.
• Code Map. Code maps help you avoid getting lost in large code bases, unfamiliar code, or legacy code by visualizing relationships among multiple pieces of code. This update adds colors to links on code maps to make it easier for you to navigate. You can also drag and drop binaries from File Explorer into a directed graph in Visual Studio to immediately start exploring the code. Check out MSDN for how to map dependencies in specific code using code maps in Visual Studio.

• X86 Debugging for .NET Native. This update supports debugging for x86 processes and dumps of apps compiled with the .NET Native tools.
• Managed memory dump analysis. When you analyze managed memory dump files, you can now Go to Definition and Find All Referencesof the selected type. To learn more, check out the blog post on .NET Memory Analysis.

• CPU and Memory Usage tool. The CPU Usage toolin the Performance and Diagnostics hub now enables you to navigate from a function name in the Call Tree to the definition of that function in the editor so that you can easily see the code that is using CPU in your application. We have also made improvements to the Memory Usage tool such as support for Win32 and WPF applications (.NET 4.0 and up on Windows 8.1) and the ability to force garbage collections in managed apps.

• Notification Hub. When we release a Visual Studio Update for you to download, the Notifications badge will turn yellow (in the upper right hand corner of the IDE). The badge also now acts as a toggle so you can easily use one click to open the hub and one click to close the hub.
• ALL CAPS. The change in our menus to use all capital letters was one of the areas about which we received a lot of feedback so a while ago we added a registry key that disabled the ALL CAPS menus in VS 2012. To make the setting more discoverable and to enable it to remain set as you upgrade across Visual Studio versions, we have now added a Tools Options setting under the General Environment settings that lets you set your preferred menu bar styling. We also roam this setting so it’s available on all your devices
• Testing. This update includes many updates to test capabilities in Visual Studio. Top features include the ability to customize test plans and test suites, ability to use work item history to track changes made to test suits and the owner of the changes, enhanced security for test suites, and cloud based load testing capabilities with application insights for monitoring performance.
• Release Management. To better manage the release of your applications you can now deploy your app to an on-premises environment or a Windows Azure environment without having to set up a Microsoft Deployment Agent on each machine. You can use Windows PowerShell, or Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC). You can also deploy to servers that are not running a Windows operating system when you use Chef. For more information, see Manage your release.
• Visual Studio Graphics Analyzer. Diagnosing DirectX rendering and performance issues is tricky and the Visual Studio Graphics Diagnostics tools help. In Update 3, we have enhanced the Graphics Analyzer to analyze graphics frames and to view the impact of shader code changes without re-running the app. You can easily configure capture options in Tools Options under Graphics Diagnostics.
• WebJobs Tooling. We have added support for Microsoft’s Azure WebJobs in Update 3. You can now create standard Console Projects in Visual Studio solutions that can be published to Azure Websites as either continuous, triggered, or scheduled WebJobs. We have also added support for two-factor authentication in One ASP.NET templates for MVC, Web Forms support, and enabled creation of ASP.Net projects using WAAD when signing in with Live Id. Checkout this Channel 9 video to learn more.
• Application Insights.Application Insights, Microsoft’s service for monitoring production web sites and Windows Store apps, is included in this update. We have improved the account setup experience so accounts can be setup in Azure without requiring a Visual Studio Online account.

You can learn more about the full list of new Update 3 features in the release notes and bug fixes in the KB article.

Other important releases

I also want to highlight some related releases announced recently that provide additional features and functionality for Update 3 users. These releases are all compatible with Update 3 and in some cases are required for Update 3.

• Multi-Device Hybrid Apps. You can use the Multi-Device Hybrid Apps CTP 2.0 release to build mobile apps using JavaScript or Typescript for iOS, Android, Windows Store, and Windows Phone using Update 3’s version of tooling for Apache Cordova. To learn more check out Multi-Device Hybrid apps. Visual Studio 2013 Update 3 is not compatible with CTP 1.0 & 1.1 for Multi-Device Hybrid apps. (Minimum edition required: Professional).
• Azure SDK 2.4 RTM. The recent Azure SDK 2.4 RTM release includes tools to manage virtual machine configuration and set up remote debugging for 32-bit virtual machines, and tools to provision Geo-Redundant Storage. You can download Windows Azure SDK for 2013, Windows Azure SDK for 2012, and Windows Azure SDK for .NET.
• IntelliTrace Stand-alone Collector. The standalone IntelliTrace collector provides a more practical alternative to remote debugging an application in production. You can use the collector to record the execution of your application on a remote machine by saving it into an .itrace file and playing it back on your local development machine with Visual Studio. For more information about the collector, see this MSDN article.
• Windows Phone 8.1 Update Emulators. Windows Phone 8.1 Update was released this morning and is ready to download. This release provides additional emulator images to Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 or later that can be used to create and test apps that will run on devices that have Windows Phone 8.1 Update.
• Visual Studio Tools for Unity. As we mentioned earlier this week, the Visual Studio Tools for Unity (formerly UnityVS) are available for download, free for Visual Studio Professional and higher.

Many of the features and bug fixes in this release come from your feedback. Thank you for sharing these suggestions with us on our UserVoice site and through the thousands of Send-a-Smile and Send-a-Frown actions you sent us from inside the IDE. If you find a bug please send it to us the Visual Studio Connect site.