Visual Studio 2012 New Features

In the past couple of years, building modern applications has been substantially more difficult because of the growing consumerization of IT. Users have changing expectations of applications. They expect applications to be simpler and to run on a wide variety of devices. Microsoft's latest release of its flagship development product, Visual Studio 2012, addresses the need to build a wide range of applications as well as embraces agile development methodologies. Built-in test tools help you create high-quality applications and bridge the gap between IT and developers. Team development capabilities make Visual Studio 2012 a unified Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solution.

With that said, there's no doubt that the big draw to Visual Studio 2012 is the ability to build Windows 8 applications. In the keynote address at the Visual Studio 2012 launch, Soma Somasegar, Microsoft's corporate vice president of the Developer Division, noted there were 600,000 downloads of Visual Studio 2012. Certainly, Windows 8 development is a big part of the new Visual Studio 2012 release -- but that's not all. Visual Studio 2012 is a huge release with more features than I can mention in a single article. One of the most obvious changes is the fact that there's an all-new set of Visual Studio editions. For more information about the different editions of Visual Studio 2012, see the sidebars "Visual Studio 2012 Editions" and "Visual Studio Express 2012 Editions." Now, let's dive into some of the major new features that you'll find in Visual Studio 2012.

New UI

If you're used to any of the earlier editions of Visual Studio, one the first things about Visual Studio 2012 that will jump out at you is the new UI. I have to say upfront that I'm not fan of the new UI changes. I find the UI too flat and too dark for my tastes. It's not as easy to differentiate the toolbar icons from one another as it was in past editions. For a product supposedly following Windows 8 UI (formerly called Metro) design patterns, the UI delivers a monochrome experience with lots of black, white, and gray. The icons are small, dark, and not very intuitive. I understand that the idea behind the new UI look is to put the focus on the code, but personally I don't find that the changes help productivity. You can see the new Visual Studio 2012 IDE in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Visual Studio 2012 New IDE 

As Figure 1 shows, the icons have little differentiation and the labels for the menu items are all capital letters. For the most part, the positioning of the menu items is about the same, but you have to pay a lot more attention to what you're doing than in the past. At first, I found the all cap labels annoying but later got used to them. However, if you want the menu items to be uppercase and lowercase letters, check out the sidebar "Disabling VisualStudio 2012's All-Caps Feature."

Although there are some nice new features such as tab pinning, I think the UI is the weakest link in the Visual Studio 2012 release. Fortunately, the other features more than make up for any productivity hindrances caused by the UI changes. Without a doubt, the most important of those new features is the ability to develop Windows 8 applications.

Windows 8 Applications

It's no secret that the main reason to upgrade to Visual Studio 2012 is to develop Windows 8 applications. With the release of Windows 8, Microsoft announced the new WinRT framework, which is essentially a Windows runtime that works with devices using ARM processors. A new generation of Windows 8 and Windows RT tablet devices, including the Microsoft Surface tablets, is expected near the end of 2012. Visual Studio 2012 is the tool to develop applications for this new generation of tablet devices -- both Windows 8 x86 devices and the new Windows RT ARM devices.

Visual Studio 2012 lets you create Windows 8 applications using a variety of languages:

To create Windows 8 applications, Visual Studio 2012 includes a set of project templates titled Windows Store. These templates create a number of different application types, including Blank App (XAML), Grid App (XAML), Split App (XAML), Class Library (Windows Store apps), Windows Runtime Component, and Unit Test Library (Windows Store apps). You can see the new Windows 8 project types in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Windows 8 Project Templates 

One thing you might not expect is that you need to get a Windows 8 developer license before you can create any Windows 8 applications. Fortunately, the Visual Studio 2012 Start screen has a link that starts a wizard that steps you through getting a Windows 8 developer license.

After you have the developer license, you can begin using any of the Windows 8 application templates to create a Windows 8 application. Project settings control whether the managed application will be targeted for the Windows 8 or WinRT runtimes. One of the coolest features for Windows 8 development is the inclusion of the new simulator for tablet development. The tablet emulator in Visual Studio 2012 is a lot like the phone emulators that were present in earlier releases of Visual Studio. The tablet emulator lets you test your Windows 8 tablet applications without needing to run them on a separate device. You can see the tablet simulator in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Windows 8 Tablet Emulator 

As Figure 3 shows, the tablet emulator presents a tablet-like screen. Moving the mouse simulates using the touch interface (assuming you don't have a touch-enabled monitor).

Expression Blend

Visual Studio 2012 includes a limited version of Expression Blend. Expression Blend is a powerful design tool that lets designers modify the look and feel of applications, without requiring them to manually code XAML. The version of Expression Blend that ships with Visual Studio 2012 is only able to work with Windows Store projects. For some reason, you can't use it on other project types. When Expression Blend runs, it starts in its own window outside the Visual Studio 2012 environment, but it does pick up the files from the open solution. If you go back into Visual Studio 2012, the IDE will prompt you that the files have been modified.

Web Development

Although Windows 8 developers will be interested in Visual Studio 2012, there's little doubt that the biggest audience will be web developers. Visual Studio 2012 has a number of new features that are important to web developers:

LightSwitch

Another important new addition to Visual Studio 2012 is the inclusion of LightSwitch. Formerly a separate product, LightSwitch is a template-based programming tool that enables rapid application development. One of the most significant new features in LightSwitch is the ability to output HTML5 client applications. With Visual Studio 2012, LightSwitch is now a project type. It's included in Visual Studio 2012 Professional, Premium, and Ultimate.

New Team Development Features

Visual Studio 2012 has a number of important team and productivity features. Some of the most important features include:

Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5

Like its predecessors, Visual Studio 2012 is accompanied by a new release of the Microsoft .NET Framework. Although the .NET Framework is no longer tied to the Visual Studio release, you need Visual Studio 2012 to take advantage of the new .NET Framework 4.5 enhancements. You can also target your projects for earlier releases of the .NET Framework. There are too many .NET Framework enhancements to list them all, but some of the most important changes include:

As you might expect, the new .NET Framework 4.5 provides the latest versions of the different .NET languages, including C# 5.0, Visual Basic 11.0, F# 3.0, and Visual C++ 11. The C++ support now includes the full C++11 library. There's also support for the latest version of the Entity Framework 5.0. The Entity Framework provides an object-oriented layer over an underlying data source. Although the Entity Framework is no longer a part of the .NET Framework, it's built using .NET. You can get the latest version of the Entity Framework for Visual Studio 2012 using the Entity Framework NuGet package.

Developing Applications for the Future

Visual Studio 2012 is a product that needs to cater to the diverse needs of web developers, Windows desktop developers, Windows 8 developers, Windows Azure developers, and Windows Phone developers. Despite of these diverse requirements and a multitude of highly questionable UI design choices, Visual Studio 2012 remains the best-in-class development platform for Windows development. Visual Studio 2012's comprehensive set of development and debugging tools as well as its integrated unit testing and load testing tools can unquestionably help you develop high-quality applications.

For Windows 8 developers, this is a must-have release. For web developers, the Page Inspector and new asynchronous APIs make it a worthwhile upgrade. The inclusion of LightSwitch is definitely a bonus, and the new asynchronous support is a great step forward.

In his keynote address at the Visual Studio 2012 release, Somasegar noted that Microsoft isn't standing still with this release. The company intends to add value to Visual Studio 2012 at a regular cadence, with the first update scheduled for the end of 2012.

Read more: Top New Features in Visual Studio 2012