Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 Now Available for Download

At the Microsoft TechEd 2014 conference in Houston, the company revealed that the Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 is now available for download. As I have mentioned in a previous article on SQL Server Pro, this is a substantial update, where Microsoft is including the Universal Apps functionality, along with new work-item tagging, backlog management, and charting capabilities.

Again, there's a ton of different features that's packed into this update. Here's some notable features that we're highlighting in today's blog post:

Web Development Tools. Microsoft has gone to great lengths to include a multitude of web development tools, such as SCSS support, a new JSON editor, updated ASP.NET templates, and more.

Azure. With Update 2, users can create websites and SQL Azure databases directly on Azure, making deployment easier and simpler.

Diagnostics. New performance events let users navigate through code for MVC methods or jump to a specific SQL command for database queries.

Apache Cordova Support. As I wrote on SharePoint Pro, Microsoft is adding Visual Studio tooling support that lets developers create cross-platform apps with HTML and JavaScript with the Apache Cordova platform.

See Microsoft's blog post detailing the full list of features in Update 2. You can also get started with these new capabilities by downloading the update from the official Visual Studio website.