Microsoft has updated the color scheme, toolbars and menus. It’s pretty obvious from looking at Figure 1 that the IDE has received a facelift. We will start with a quick tour of the IDE and point out some of the new features and how they work. In this article we’ll cover the enhancements made to ASP.NET Web Forms, enhancements made to the HTML, CSS and JavaScript code editors, project compatibility with Visual Studio 2010, enhancements made to web publishing and deployment, enhancements made to working with Windows Azure and some tips and tricks along the way. We won’t cover all of these new features and enhancements in this article because many of the items at the top of the list have already been covered in recent CODE Magazine issues ( Table 1).

New features can be broken down into categories including ASP.NET Core Services, ASP.NET MVC 4, Web API, bundling and minification, Web Sockets, SignalR, ASP.NET Web Forms, editor enhancements, deployment and publishing enhancements, project compatibility enhancements, and the list goes on. The list of new features in ASP.NET 4.5 and Visual Studio 2012 is quite impressive. This article provides an overview of many of those new features and enhancements ranging from improved editors for HTML, CSS and JavaScript all the way through to publishing your work to the web. Microsoft has added an abundance of new features and functionality to ASP.NET 4.5 and Visual Studio 2012.

Visual studio 2012