Tag Archives: Visual Studio

Xamarin is now included for free in Visual Studio

Starting April of 2016, Visual Studio now includes Xamarin for free. This is the case for every edition of Visual Studio, including Visual Studio Community Edition, which is free as well.

With Xamarin you can develop and publish native apps for iOS and Android using C# or F# from directly within Visual Studio with no limits on app size.

For developers that are using Mac, Xamarin Studio is now available as a benefit of your Visual Studio Professional or Enterprise subscription. Developers can use the newly-created Xamarin Studio Community Edition for free.

You can visit Xamarin’s store to download Xamarin for free. Keep in mind that, Xamarin, although free, is license restricted for bigger companies. If you want to use Xamarin you will need to comply to one of the following license terms:

  • Individual license – If you are an individual working on your own applications to sell or for any other purpose, you may use the software to develop and test those applications.
  • Organization licenses – If you are an organization, your users may use the software as follows:
    • Any number of your users may use the software to develop and test your applications released under Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved open source software licenses.
    • Any number of your users may use the software to develop and test extensions to Visual Studio.
    • Any number of your users may use the software to develop and test your applications as part of online or in person classroom training and education, or for performing academic research.
    • If none of the above apply, and you are also not an enterprise (defined below), then up to 5 of your individual users can use the software concurrently to develop and test your applications.
    • If you are an enterprise, your employees and contractors may not use the software to develop or test your applications, except for open source and education purposes as permitted above. An enterprise is any organization and its affiliates who collectively have either (a) more than 250 PCs or users or (b) more than one million US dollars (or the equivalent in other currencies) in annual revenues, and enterprise means those entities that control (via majority ownership), are controlled by, or are under common control with an organization.
  • Demo use – The uses permitted above include use of the software in demonstrating your applications.

Visual Studio 2013 Update 5 is now available

On July 20th 2015, a new update for Visual Studio 2013 by Microsoft became available for download.

Visual Studio 2013 is an integrated development environment from Microsoft with a comprehensive collection of developer tools and services, used to create apps, as well as web sites and web services.

The latest update features cumulative series of technology improvements and bug fixes to enhance and expand both Visual Studio 2013 and Team Foundation Server 2013 to support the latest software development innovations for building and managing modern apps.

Here are some changes:

  • Cloud-based load testing from Azure datacenters worldwide – allows you to perform cloud-based load testing from any of the supported Azure datacenters
  • Current iteration query token – allows you to run queries with the @currentIteration on Visual Studio Online or Visual Studio Foundation Server
  • Team Project Rename support for Local Workspaces – allows you to update local workspaces after a team project is renamed
  • Bug Fixes & Known Issues – fixed a few known issues

If you would like to try something new, the new Visual Studio 2015 has also been released on July 20th 2015, together with .NET Framework 4.6. You can download it here.

If you wish to learn more, a detailed description of the update for Visual Studio 2013 can be found here.

Please note, that the Visual Studio 2013 RTM will only be supported for one year after this update, then it will be discontinued.

Visual Studio 2015 and .NET Framework 4.6 have been released

On July 20th 2015, the new Visual Studio 2015 and .NET Framework 4.6 by Microsoft became available to download.

This release is a big step to bring the productivity of these products to any developer working on any kind of application, while delivering a new level of innovation in the productivity.

Visual Studio 2015 is an integrated development environment from Microsoft with a comprehensive collection of developer tools and services, used to create apps, as well as web sites and web services.

The Visual Studio family has expanded over the years:

  • Visual Studio Community – a free for non-enterprise development, fully -featured, and extensible IDE for creating modern applications for Windows, Android, and iOS, as well as web applications and cloud services
  • Visual Studio Online – services for teams to share code, track work, and ship software – for any language, all in a single package
  • Visual Studio Code – refined code editor supporting cross-platform to build and debug modern web and cloud applications

Visual Studio 2015 and .NET 4.6 highlights

Innovation in productivity

  • Debugging and Diagnostics – unified debugging and profiling into single Diagnostics Tool window; with PrefTips you can get performance information right in your code
  • Code editing and Refactoring – C# and VB developers can use the new Roslyn-based tooling, including Light Bulbs that pro-actively suggest potential fixes or code refactoring tooling; with code analyzers it is possible to customize warnings and suggestions delivered inside the editor; added XAML editor
  • Programming Languages – this new release includes the final version of C# 6 and Visual Basic 14 and improved support for C++ 11/14/17 together with TypeScript 1.5, F# 4.0 and tools for Python and dozens of other languages

Visual Studio 2015 release date announced

Microsoft announced that on July 20th 2015, there will be a final release of Visual Studio 2015, .NET Framework 4.6 and Team Foundation Server 2015.

Visual Studio 2015 is a long expected release, which will include multi-platform creation of apps for Windows, Android, iOS, as well as creation of web applications and cloud services, and more. It also offers a wide range of tools to increase and ease the productivity of developers, like diagnostics tools, integrated editors, debuggers and profiles, plus thousands of extensions from PHP to gaming.

Changes will include:

  • Visual Studio C++ for Cross-Platform Development
  • Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova
  • Visual Studio Emulator for Android
  • Visual Studio Tools for Universal Windows App Development
  • Visual C++
  • C# and Visual Basic
  • .NET Framework 4.6

and many more. You can get more information at https://www.visualstudio.com/news/vs2015-vs.

Microsoft also gives you the opportunity to watch the release closely on July 20th 2015 at 3:30 PM UTC (8:30 AM PDT). The event will be available to watch online at https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/visualstudio-release-event-vs, with no registration needed.

Microsoft releases Visual Studio Community 2013

Microsoft has released a new version of Visual Studio 2013 that goes by the name of Visual Studio Community 2013.

What is this you may ask? Simply put, Visual Studio Community edition is a free, full-featured development environment designed for open source contributors, students, small companies, start-ups and individual developers.

Visual Studio Community 2013 offers the same of features that can be found in the professional version including the ability to install extensions.

Any individual developer can use the Visual Studio Community edition to create free or commercial apps. As for organizations, if you are a non-enterprise organization, up to 5 of your developers can use the Community edition. Otherwise, for enterprise organizations, you are prohibited from using this version except in cases where your project is an open source project or has to do with academic research and classroom learning.

Visual Studio Community 2013 comes with update 4 build in and can be downloaded at Visual Studio Community 2013 Offline Installer (.ISO / English)

If you are interested in more details or you wish to download a different language of the product, visit Visual Studio’s download page

Supported Operation Systems for Visual Studio Community 2013

  • Windows 8.1 (x86 and x64)
  • Windows 8 (x86 and x64)
  • Windows 7 SP1 (x86 and x64)
  • Windows Server 2012 R2 (x64)
  • Windows Server 2012 (x64)
  • Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 (x64)

Recommended System Requirements

  • 1.6 GHz or faster processor
  • 1 GB of RAM (1.5 GB if running on a virtual machine)
  • 20 GB of available hard disk space
  • 5400 RPM hard disk drive
  • DirectX 9-capable video card that runs at 1024 x 768 or higher display resolution