Microsoft releases Visual Studio 14 CTP 3 as well as an early build of the .NET Framework vNext

Microsoft has made available the third CTP for Visual Studio 14, as well as an early build of .NET Framework vNext. Visual Studio 14 CTP 3 brings along several new features along with bug fixes, as well as includes all the Visual Studio 2013 Update 3 web tooling improvement and ASP.NET vNext alpha 3 runtime packages.

Some of the new features included with CTP 3 include .NET Native now integrated into Visual Studio 14, as well as PerfTips in the Debugger and Visual C++ enhancements. You can also roam custom window layouts across machines that have CTP 3 installed if you signed into the IDE with the same account.

“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,” Microsoft explained in an official blog post.

“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,” Microsoft added.

For those that did not know, ASP.NET vNext is a lean and composable framework for building web and cloud applications. ASP.NET vNext is fully open source and available on GitHub. ASP.NET vNext is currently in preview.

You can snag Visual Studio 14 CTP 3 via the download link below, along with .NET Framework vNext. You can also get it directly from the Microsoft Download Center or from MSDN subscriber downloads or save some setup time and use a ready-to-use VM in Azure.