On March 7th, 2017, Microsoft officially launched Visual Studio 2017. There were a lot of new features announced in Visual Studio 2017 and several partner-related announcements as well. While this blog post does not cover everything announced (that would be a rather large post!) it does provide you with a taste of what is available. If you’re curious about everything else that was talked about, you can watch the keynote and other sessions online at the Visual Studio 2017 Launch site.
One of the first things you might notice is that there is a brand new Visual Studio icon (as shown above). This makes it much easier to distinguish when you have multiple versions of Visual Studio pinned to your task bar. Plus, it’s always refreshing to see an updated look :-)
What’s New?
I was originally planning on highlighting some of the new features made available in Visual Studio 2017 but the list was huge! Rather than list everything out, I think it’s better, and more efficient, to simply provide the link to the Visual Studio 2017 Release Notes.
Without going into the details, the release notes covers the following topics:
- Installation Experience
- Visual Studio IDE
- Visual C++
- C# and Visual Basic
- F#
- JavaScript and TypeScript
- Debugging and Diagnostics
- Live Unit Testing
- Testing Tools
- Team Explorer
- Visual Studio Extensibility
- .NET Core and ASP.NET Core
- Tools for Universal Windows App Development
- Xamarin
- Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova
- Node.js Tools for Visual Studio
- Visual Studio Tools for Unity
- Redgate
- NuGet
- Tools for XAML Apps
- Data Tools and SQL Server
- Developer Analytics Tools
- Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio
- Live Architecture Dependency Validation
- Developer Command Prompt
- Azure SDK for .NET
- Enhanced Visual Studio Feedback Workflow
- Known Issues
As you can see, the list is HUGE! There are a lot of great features in Visual Studio 2017 and it’s definitely worth the read.
Other Announcements
Along with all the great new features of Visual Studio 2017, there were a few other announcements worth repeating.
Training
As part of the Visual Studio Dev Essentials offering, you get access to the following training opportunities:
- Pluralsight – 3 month subscription
- Selected Xamarin University courses on-demand
- WintellectNOW – 3 month subscription
- Linux Academy – 3 month subscription
- Microsoft Virtual Academy
- Opsgility – 3 month subscription
Also announced, if you have a Visual Studio Enterprise Subscription, access to Pluralsight’s full catalog, as well as Code School’s complete course catalog, is included at no extra cost! You can find out more about this offer here.
DevOps
If you currently utilize Team Foundation Server on-premises and have been thinking about moving to Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) Microsoft now provides a migration path. You can find out more about this capability here.
Microsoft also announced the Enterprise DevOps Accelerator offering. If you currently have a lot of Visual Studio Enterprise subscribers (e.g. > 50) then you will likely want to check into this offering. Along with providing access to additional/discounted features it also includes a two-week DevOps engagement delivered at your site! Very cool!
Summary
OK, so I know I didn’t cover everything related to the Visual Studio 2017 launch but that is still a lot to take in! To get even more information, I would encourage you to check out the launch videos now available on-line here. There is a lot to learn and I hope to share some of what I learn on this blog as I progress through some of the new features and start making use of them. If you come across a favorite feature, let us know about it below!