Today we released Visual Studio “14” CTP 3 and an early build of the .NET Framework vNext. Get it from the Microsoft Download Center or from MSDN subscriber downloads or save some setup time and use a ready-to-use VM in Azure. You’ll find a complete list of new features and fixes in the Visual Studio “14” release notes. Some highlights in this release include:

• ASP.NET and Web Development vNext Updates. This CTP includes all the Visual Studio 2013 Update 3 web tooling improvement and ASP.NET vNext alpha 3 runtime packages. It has improved tooling support for ASP.NET vNext, such as support for build configuration and support for unit tests, and it no longer includes content and compile items inside “.kproj” file. ASP.NET vNext includes an updated version of the RyuJIT JIT compiler. For details, please read the full post on the .NET Web Development Tools blog.
• .NET Native Updates..NET Native is now integrated into Visual Studio “14.” It includes initial support for calling WCF services within .NET Native apps and the associated Add Service Reference experience in Visual Studio.
• PerfTips in the Debugger. In CTP 3 you can see how long your code took to execute as you hit breakpoints and step through code with the debugger. Simply look at the end of the current line when you are stopped in the debugger to see the performance tooltip. For more information read the dedicated post on PerfTips on diagnostics blog.

• Visual C++ Enhancements. In this CTP, we continue enhancing our C/C++ standard conformance support in addition to overall C++ user productivity improvements. In the standards area, the compiler now supports the thread_local storage specifier, which allows objects to be stored separately for each thread. In the productivity area, Light Bulbs replace Smart Tags to show fixes to issues. Light Bulbs are both more discoverable and also offer a preview of the action before you take it. In addition, you can now refactor to convert string literals littered with escape sequences into a much more easily-readable raw-string format. We have also integrated the Rename Symbol extension for Visual Studio 2013 into the product. To learn more these features, check the Visual C++ team blog.
• Roaming Custom Layouts. In CTP 2 we introduced Custom Layouts, which enable you to save and apply your tool window layout customizations. In CTP 3 Visual Studio will now roam these customizations across machines that have CTP 3 installed if you signed into the IDE with the same account.
• Shared Projects. With CTP 3, you can create an empty C#, VB, and JavaScript shared project from the “File > New Project” menu. Windows Store/Phone Projects written in C#/VB/JavaScript, as well as some classic desktop projects (Console Application, Class Library, Windows Form Application, Portable Class Library, WPF) written in C#/VB can consume one or many of these shared projects.
• High Resolution Icons. In this CTP, Visual Studio supports high resolution icons in command bars, tool window toolbars (standard) and main menus when running above 100% DPI scaling.

Other Developer Releases

Along with Visual Studio “14” CTP 3 I also want to call attention to some related released that we recently announced:

• Azure Resource Manager Tools. Last week we announced the first public preview of Azure Resource Manager Tools for Visual Studio. Download the Azure Resource Manager Tools Preview to see the many improvements including the ability to select existing resource groups, MRU or template and parameter files, and validation of parameter values. This release requires Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 RC or above and Microsoft Azure PowerShell 0.8.3 or higher.
• Bing Developer Assistant for Visual Studio. The Bing Developer Assistant combines the functionality of two popular Visual Studio extensions into one: Sample Browser and Bing Code Search. It enables developers to find and reuse millions of code snippets and code sample projects across the coding community, including MSDN, StackOverflow, Dotnetperls and CSharp411 from within the Visual Studio IDE. New features include IntelliSense, which pulls in relevant sample codes related to coding projects in real time, and offline search. Checkout this blog post on how to improve productivity within Visual Studio using Bing Developer Assistant.

We’re looking forward to your feedback on this CTP. Please post your suggestions on UserVoice, log bugs you find on our Connect site and send us a smile or frown from inside the IDE.

Thanks,

John

John Montgomery, Director of Program Management, Visual Studio Platform John has been at Microsoft for 15 years, working in developer technologies the whole time. Most recently before working on the Visual Studio core development environment, he was working on the tools for Windows 8 development.