Visual Studio 2013 – Update 2 is available

Microsoft has released the latest update for Visual Studio 2013 with major improvements including support for developing Universal apps for Windows 8.x, Win Phone, and XBOX.

Here are the list of improvements included as part of the release(lending from Visual Studio team blog):

Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 has many new capabilities as well as fixes that address bugs, customer feedback, performance, and reliability improvements. Here are some new capabilities that are part of this and related Updates and links to where you can find more info.

• Universal Apps. With this release you can now build universal apps that can run on Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 while sharing code and assets through shared projects.
• TypeScript. The TypeScript language is a typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript. As a typed language you can define classes, modules and interfaces that compiles to JavaScript and runs in any browser.
• Web Tool. Our web development tools have many new features like SCSS support, a new JSON editor, updated ASP.NET templates, and an improved URL picker.
• Azure tools. It’s easier to take advantage of Azure with options to create websites and SQL Azure databases directly on Azure for simpler deployment to a development / testing environment.
• Diagnostics. Our diagnostics tools also got some enhancements. Performance events now let you navigate to user code for MVC Methods or jump to the SQL command for database queries. It is also possible to view the Windows Store diagnostics tools at the same time to see all your diagnostics information on a shared timeline.
• Slipstream install. You can download Visual Studio with all its latest features from one install that includes Visual Studio 2013 RTM and Update 2 for Visual Studio.

There are a number of other important updates that are available today in addition to Update 2 for Visual Studio 2013:

• Apache Cordova and Visual Studio. Cordova tools in Visual Studio let web developers build cross-platform mobile applications targeting Android, iOS, Windows and Windows Phone using use their existing skills in HTML and JavaScript. To learn more about Apache Cordova visit http://cordova.apache.org/
• A cloud optimized .NET. The latest updates to the framework provide a cloud optimized mode that is smaller, lighter weight, and designed for cloud and server workloads.
• .Net vNext. This update to the .Net framework is optimized for cloud-first and mobile-first development. It enables you to compile C# 6 and VB code with Roslyn compilers, speed up Windows Store apps with the .NET Native ahead of time compiler, and has a cloud optimized mode for ASP.NET apps.
• TFS 2013 Update 2. It’s worth mentioning again the updates in TFS 2013 like improvements for tagging, charting, shared parameters, cloud load testing application analytics, and a lot more.

Check out Somasegar’s Blog and Brian Harry’s Blog to get more details on some of the highlights in this release. For a quick view at all the features and fixes included in this update go to the KB article.

DOWNLOAD: 

Visual Studio 2013 – Update 2 (Web / ISO)