Microsoft has rolled out Visual Studio 2013 Update 2, which brings along many new capabilities as well as fixes that address bugs, customer feedback, performance, and reliability improvements. One of the key features is the ability to build universal apps for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.
“We’re excited to share that the final release of Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 is ready to download. If you are already using Visual Studio 2013 then you’ll soon have a notification waiting for you in the notification hub to start the download and install Update 2 for Visual Studio 2013. If you haven’t started using Visual Studio 2013 you can get all the new capabilities and fixes with a single install that includes Visual Studio 2013 RTM and all the features in Update 2,” Microsoft stated in an official blog post.
Aside from universal app support allowing you to share code and assets, Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 adds support for TypeScript, a new Web Tool, Azure tools, and much more. You can also build cross-platform mobile applications targeting Android, iOS, Windows, and Windows Phone with Apache Cordova and Visual Studio.
Here are the key features of this update:
- Universal Apps. With this release you can now build universal apps that can run on Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 while sharing code and assets through shared projects.
- TypeScript. The TypeScript language is a typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript. As a typed language you can define classes, modules and interfaces that compiles to JavaScript and runs in any browser.
- Web Tool. Our web development tools have many new features like SCSS support, a new JSON editor, updated ASP.NET templates, and an improved URL picker.
- Azure tools. It’s easier to take advantage of Azure with options to create websites and SQL Azure databases directly on Azure for simpler deployment to a development / testing environment.
- Diagnostics. Our diagnostics tools also got some enhancements. Performance events now let you navigate to user code for MVC Methods or jump to the SQL command for database queries. It is also possible to view the Windows Store diagnostics tools at the same time to see all your diagnostics information on a shared timeline.
- Slipstream install. You can download Visual Studio with all its latest features from one install that includes Visual Studio 2013 RTM and Update 2 for Visual Studio.
- Apache Cordova and Visual Studio. Cordova tools in Visual Studio let web developers build cross-platform mobile applications targeting Android, iOS, Windows and Windows Phone using use their existing skills in HTML and JavaScript. To learn more about Apache Cordova visit http://cordova.apache.org/
- A cloud optimized .NET. The latest updates to the framework provide a cloud optimized mode that is smaller, lighter weight, and designed for cloud and server workloads.
- .Net vNext. This update to the .Net framework is optimized for cloud-first and mobile-first development. It enables you to compile C# 6 and VB code with Roslyn compilers, speed up Windows Store apps with the .NET Native ahead of time compiler, and has a cloud optimized mode for ASP.NET apps.
- TFS 2013 Update 2. It’s worth mentioning again the updates in TFS 2013 like improvements for tagging, charting, shared parameters, companion services for cloud load testing analytics, and a lot more.
