Latest Features in Updated Visual Studio Code -- ADTmag

Latest Features in Updated Visual Studio Code

By David Ramel
August 19, 2020

The latest update of Microsoft's popular open-source, cross-platform Visual Studio Code editor (version 1.48) comes with improvements in accessibility, the workbench, source control, and debugging, among others.

There's a long list of upgrades in v1.48, including:

Settings Sync to Stable -- Settings Sync is now available for preview in stable. This feature lets developers share their VS Code configurations such as settings, keybindings, and installed extensions across machines so they are always working with their favorite setup.
Updated Extensions view menu -- Simplified menu with additional filtering options. The Extensions view filter actions are now displayed under a separate filter action (funnel button). Also, the Extensions view Views and More Actions (...) menu has been refactored for better organization of extension queries (such as Installed or Recommended) and other actions like Check for Extension Updates and Enable All Extensions.
New Git View submenus -- Refactored overflow menu for Git in the Source Control view. A new submenu proposed API powers the refactoring of the Git View and More Actions (...) menu for better organization of several commands.
Updated in-browser debugging -- Debug in the browser without writing a launch configuration. A new Debug: Open Link command has been added to quickly debug any URL, whereas before, developers had to install the Debugger for Chrome extension and write a launch.json config file to debug a page. With the new command, developers can debug any URL without requiring additional launch configurations.
Publish a public repository -- Choose whether to publish to a public or private GitHub repository. Developers can now make the repository public, as opposed to the previous private default, when publishing a repository to GitHub.
Notebook UX updates -- New Cell menu, enhanced drag and drop. In its continuing effort to improve native support for Notebooks, the VS Code team created a GitHub Issue Notebooks extension -- in preview -- that helps developers search GitHub issues and pull requests. Using this preview requires using VS Code Insiders early-access builds. Also, dragging a collapsed Markdown cell will now move all nested cells inside the folding region.
New Remote Container topics -- These include:

Attach to Container -- Attach to an already running Docker Container
Create a Dev Container -- Create a custom container matching a development environment
devcontainer.json reference -- Control container creation through devcontainer.json properties

Java lightweight mode -- Start working with your Java source files more quickly. The Language Support for Java extension now provides a lightweight mode to help developers quickly work with their Java source files while still leveraging language features such as code completion, navigation, outlining, and syntax checking for source code, as well as the JDK.