With the start of a new season of Game of Thrones, folks are sitting on the edge of their seats waiting to see what’s coming. Unlike the Khaleesi who seems to be going nowhere fast, Node.js Tools for Visual Studio (NTVS) has made some moves recently. Over the last month, we released Node.js Tools 1.0 for Visual Studio, joined the vibrant open source community on GitHub, and created VM images so anyone can quickly get started with NTVS.

1.0 Release

What is our goal with NTVS? We want to bring the power of Visual Studio to Node.js so you can build, debug, and deploy a working application faster than ever before. Say goodbye to console.log(…) with our advanced debugging and profiling experiences—something as simple as allowing breakpoints goes a long way in increasing developer productivity!

To learn more about the features in the NTVS 1.0 release, visit Node.js Tools for Visual Studio on visualstudio.com. If you prefer watching a video, check out this overview of Node.js Tools 1.0 for Visual Studio.

Join the GitHub community

We’ve listened to you all and have begun transitioning our workflow to GitHub. The most engaged members of the JavaScript and Node.js communities interact on GitHub and we are thrilled to become a part of the discussion. We are already excited by the feedback we’ve already gotten from the community—thank you for joining us on our journey!

Check out our static analysis engine, file an issue, and peruse our pull-requests (or even better, tackle an up-for-grabs issue!).

Grab ‘n’ go with our VM

Don’t have Windows? No problem.Everyone is welcome to play with Node.js Tools for Visual Studio.

We have created a VM image in Azure with Visual Studio Community 2013, Node.js, and NTVS pre-installed. After provisioning these VMs, you can get an app up and running in NTVS and experiment with our supported features.

Sign up for a free-trial of Azure if you don’t have an account and log in to the Azure Portal (click Portal in the top right). Select Virtual Machine in the left pane of the portal and create a new VM by clicking “+New” at the bottom of the page.

Navigate to Visual Studio and select “Visual Studio Community 2013 Update 4 with Tools for Node.js.” Now just launch Visual Studio and you are ready to go!

Check out the Virtual Machine Documentation page to learn how to provision your virtual machine.

Use our VMs in Azure or download our tooling today! Let us know how we’re doing by filing issues on GitHub or reaching out to us on Twitter.

Over ‘n’ out

Kasey Uhlenhuth, Program Manager, Node.js Tools for Visual Studio @kuhlenhuth Kasey Uhlenhuth is a program manager working on improving the Node.js experience within Visual Studio as well as providing Interactive experiences on the Managed Languages team.