The Top 10 Slickest Features in Visual Studio 2010

by Darryl K. Taft

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 have something for every developer. The new editor, now using Windows Presentation Foundation, delivers a more flexible, feature-rich environment that supports concepts such as the use of multiple monitors. This enables a developer to have one monitor with code, another with the user interface designer and yet another with database structure. With support for the latest Microsoft releases, developers can use their existing skills to create more types of applications than ever. Visual Studio 2010 has built-in support for Windows 7 multitouch and “ribbon” interfaces. For the first time, developers have integrated access to SharePoint functionality into the Visual Studio integrated development environment. Windows Azure tools make it easy to quickly develop, debug, test and deploy cloud applications from within the familiar Visual Studio environment.

The IntelliTrace feature enables a developer to step back through a recorded history of his applications execution to see what happened just before the application crashed, and refer to actionable bug reports that include the application’s execution history.

This feature enables developers to fight regression errors with test impact analysis, which keeps developers informed about tests that need to rerun with every check-in, and improves application quality with real-time information about tests results.

This feature enables developers to edit multiple files across multiple monitors, stretches their development workspace across multiple monitors and minimizes context switching between files.

This feature includes MSBUILD support for faster compilation. Also, multitargeting enables the use of multiple C++ compilers from VS2010. The new version of the tool set also includes improved IntelliSense in C++ projects.

This feature enables developers to get IntelliSense function code auto-completion support on dynamically generated JScript objects, to enjoy IntelliSense support for third-party JavaScript frameworks and also to enjoy faster IntelliSense support in client-side Web development situations.

This feature enables developers to easily add interactivity to their ASP.NET applications, to use the jQuery framework in their ASP.NET AJAX applications and to use client-side databound controls to improve Web application performance.

This feature enables developers to easily personalize their work environments and turn their start page into a custom application hosted in Visual Studio. Simply put, it enables developers to work the way they want to.

This feature enables developers to move their database, registry and Web.config settings into production with one click, and to quickly push Website updates into production with one click. In addition, with Visual Studio 2010, xcopy deployment is much improved.

This feature enables developers to use Microsoft’s Language Integrated Query (LINQ) with SharePoint to easily join multiple data sources. Developers also can pull in external data into SharePoint, and create Web parts and custom lists.

With this feature developers can build one application to run on the Web and offline. Developers also can build broad-reaching Internet applications that can run offline, and get the best of both online and offline applications with new Silverlight design tools.