Visual Studio 15 Preview 3 brings huge innovations and improvements

Madalina Dinita
by Madalina Dinita
Former Managing Editor
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Visual Studio 15 Preview 3 is now available for download and brings impressive new features and improvements to make your work easier. This preview version is an unsupported pre-release version of Visual Studio, and you shouldn’t use it in a production environment.

The improvements focus on 16 areas and include: updates and fixes to the Visual C++ environment, updated C++ compiler with enhanced support for C++11 and C++14, the new SQLite-based database engine is now being used by default to speed up database operations, and more.

The full list of improvements and bug fixe includes:

  • Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova: all new projects, created from the template or from existing code, will be targeting Cordova 6.1.1.
  • Visual Studio Tools for Universal Windows App Development:
    • Updated.NET Native Toolchain: brings better runtime performance for UWP apps managed in Visual Studio, and over 600 bug fixes.
  • Visual C++ received the C++ Standard Library feature.
  • C# and Visual Basic: IntelliSense now allows you to filter the member list by type. Also, new language extensions have been added.
  • Refreshed and Enhanced Visual Studio Feedback Workflow: the Report-a-Problem experience got better thanks to the new comprehensive web portal for a complete end-to-end feedback solution.
  • XAML Diagnostics: the runtime toolbar now has an option to track focus.
  • Visual Studio IDE: Reload All Projects has been replaced with Reload Solution to support better performance of switching branches external to VS.
  • Debugging and Diagnostics:  the new Exception Helper lets you view your exception information.
  • NuGet: improves handling of configuration files and brings support for Linux and Apple environments.
  • JavaScript and TypeScript: a preview of the new JavaScript language service is now available.
  • Developer Analytics Tools: the Developer Analytics Tools v8.0 brings five improvements.
  • Team Explorer: if you connect to Team Foundation Server 2015 or earlier, you will see the legacy work item forms.
  • SQL Server Data Tools: brings support for the latest features in Azure SQL Database and SQL Server 2016.
  • Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio: new Office Add-in templates are available.
  • Visual Studio Software Development Kit (SDK)
  • Xamarin: Xamarin 4.1 is included in Visual Studio “15” Preview 3, and adds support for tvOS, improves the iOS Assets Catalog support, and the XML editing experience.

For more in-depth details about the new features and improvements, go to the official Visual Studio page.

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