Visual Studio Preview Provides an Early Peek at New Features

Visual Studio Preview Provides an Early Peek at New Features

While the audience for this will likely be fairly limited, developers interested in early access to new Visual Studio features now have a new option. It’s called Visual Studio Preview.

Note: Microsoft has never formally announced Visual Studio Preview, from what I can see. This new program was first spotted by WalkingCat on Twitter.

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“Get access to the Preview to try out the latest features and help make Visual Studio even better,” the Visual Studio Preview site notes.

The Visual Studio Preview offers “the most recent code pushes” but “may lead to the occasional broken build.” On the good news front, it runs side-by-side with the shipping version of Visual Studio 2017, so there’s no real worry here. You can also uninstall it at any time, you’re not locked in as you often are on, say, the Windows 10 Insider Preview.

Visual Studio Preview updates come in the form of full builds, it looks like, with each build promising “new features, bug fixes, and other recently closed issues.”

Key among the benefits of Visual Studio Preview, right now at least, is the inclusion of Python support, which was stripped from the shipping version of Visual Studio 2017 because of quality issues. Python for Visual Studio 2017 offers “improved IntelliSense, web development projects, Git and VSTS integration,” Microsoft notes. “[And it can] save you time and effort on everyday tasks. Use world class debugging (local, remote, cross-platform, and Python/native) and profiling tools to improve the quality and performance of your Python code.”

Naturally, I downloaded Visual Studio 2017 Preview (Community). I almost went a few days there without some kind of pre-release software on my PC. 🙂

 

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Conversation 3 comments

  • crfonseca

    Premium Member
    09 March, 2017 - 11:03 am

    <p>So… Now Microsoft has the Windows Insider program, the Skype Insiders program, and the Visual Studio Preview program.</p><p>Oh, wait, they renamed the Skype Insiders to Skype Insider and/or Skype Preview. You think I'm making this up? <a href="https://www.skype.com/en/legal/skype-insider-program-terms/&quot; target="_blank">See for yourselves then!</a></p><p>Well, that's not confusing at all.</p>

  • jrswarr

    Premium Member
    09 March, 2017 - 12:28 pm

    <p>What fun is it NOT to live on the Edge? Of course ALL my PC's (save one) run Windows Insider Fast Lane – why should my development environment be different? – Thanks for the heads-up!</p>

  • Dan1986ist

    Premium Member
    09 March, 2017 - 3:02 pm

    <p>Does the following apply to developers coding Win32 applications in the Visual Studio Preview or just UWP/Store/whatever apps? "No, “Preview” is not licensed to build shipping apps. Like any other pre-releases of Visual Studio, it is not supported in production environments." </p>

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