New Features in Visual Studio 2010

Microsoft has added lot of new features with Visual Studio 2010. These new features/functionalities help developers to work more efficiently, make their works simple, and reduce development times. This article describes what’s new in visual studio 2010?

Top Features of Visual Studio 2010
Some features of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 are given bellow:

• It supports multi targeting application development environment. We can develop not only .Net Framework 4.0, but also the earlier versions of .Net Frameworks. During new project creation we can select different types of .Net Framework (2.0, 3.0, 3.5, and 4.0).
• It provides better Toolbox support. We can search any Toolbox item easily. For that just need to type desired Toolbox item name. By pressing TAB we can go next matching.
• One can easily resize the window size by pressing the control key (CTRL) and mouse wheel. In earlier versions we have open option panel and change the font size of the editor which takes extra time.
• It’s searching is now 2-5 times faster than the earlier versions. In order to create the instance of a class we don’t need to type the full name of the class. Just type some character of the class name, IDE will automatically filter out and show the class name.
• It supports us to detach the window outside the editor. We can detach Error, Output, Solution Explorer or Properties window easily with the help of mouse.
  
• It support generate from usage feature that help us to use classes and member before definition. We can generate a stub for any classes, methods and properties that we want to use but have not yet defined. It helps us to create classes, methods and properties automatically.
  If we write the codes to create the instance of a class that is not defined IDE help us to generate that class automatically.
  For example just type the code:

   

  Student oStudent = new Student();
  

  Where, Student class is not created.
  Click on option “Generate class for Student “.
  Student class will be automatically created.
  
  In this way we can create methods and properties automatically. Sample code is given bellow:

  Student oStudent = new Student();
  Student.StudentID = 1;
  Student.GetStudent();
  

• During debugging we can add labels to view the value by clicking the pin and can see the values are changing in labels. We can also set the comments.
• In Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate version we can generate the sequence diagram by right clicking any method selecting “Generate Sequence Diagram”.
• For C# it helps us to view the call hierarchy of a method. For that right click on any method and select View Call Hierarchy.
• It allows us for parallel programming. It’s some new visual tools help us to debug and view simultaneously running threads.
• It provides some other features also like: reports, better TFS support, modeling, in-built facilities for Cloud development, etc

These new features can add extra value in our software development. Visual Studio 2010 IDE has some new features also. For productive development we should learn and get familiar all of them.