Since our first stable release of Node.js Tools 1.0 for Visual Studio (NTVS) earlier this year, we have seen a lot of interest in this free extension. We are both humbled and excited by the response and community engagement on GitHub.
We’ve been hard at work developing interim releases with the support of our vibrant community. And today, we are pleased to announce that our next stable release of Node.js Tools 1.1 for Visual Studio is available for download. NTVS 1.1 supports Visual Studio 2012, 2013, 2015 (including the free Visual Studio Community Edition and Express for Web). To learn more about NTVS v1.1, visit Node.js Tools for Visual Studio on visualstudio.com.
We strive to make NTVS the best Node.js development experience out there by bringing the power of Visual Studio to allow developers to build enterprise-grade Node.js applications like a boss. Node.js Tools supports you at every stage of your application—from powerful code completions, to advanced debugging and profiling, to unit testing, cloud deployment, and much much more.
What’s new in v1.1?
Apart from support for Node.js v4.x and numerous bug fixes all across the product, we’ve focused on increasing developer productivity with the following improvements.
Faster and clutter-free IntelliSense
Apart from improving the overall code analysis performance, we have added a Quick IntelliSense mode and an easier way to classify browser and Node.js code for a clutter free IntelliSense experience to make it easier for full-stack developers to switch contexts between backend and frontend development.
This release includes an ES6 IntelliSense Preview powered by TypeScript.
More reliable debugging
Advanced debugging is the cornerstone of NTVS and we are committed to making it best-in-class. With this release we have made it even better by fixing several stability issues developers have reported in our earlier releases. So if breakpoints weren't working properly sometimes, or your app was having trouble running under the debugger, or things were generally inconsistent then hopefully this'll help. J
Still running into problems? Please, please, pleasefile an issue on GitHub so we can work together to resolve it!
npm v3 support
Look familiar?
npm v3 is officially out of beta , and one of the features we're most excited about is that dependencies are installed maximally flat, so you're less likely to run into MAX_PATH issues.
NTVS v1.1 brings full support for this latest version of npm in both solution explorer and the JavaScript analysis engine. Ready to give npm v3 a spin? Either follow the manual upgrade steps, or take advantage of the npm-windows-upgrade package from our friends at Microsoft DX.
Improved Performance
Slow project load times are a drag, but not anymore. We have significantly improved our performance during project load when the dependency tree is large. In some cases, we have seen over 80% gain in load times of large projects.
Code Snippets
Writing the same few lines of code over and over again gets annoying real fast. Support for Code Snippets is finally here to ease that pain. Simply press Ctrl+K+X to browse and select a snippet to insert, or type in the snippet name and press tab to complete it.
Write a great code snippet that you'd like to share? Let us know - we may be able to include it in the next update of NTVS.
And much more!
We’ve made improvements all across the product, including better code-completion defaults, improved formatting, unit testing, and support for the NTVS IoT extension, which enables developers to deploy Node.js as a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) application to Windows IoT Core devices like Raspberry Pi 2. Check out our release notes for the interim releases for a more comprehensive list of improvements.
Help make NTVS better
NTVS is a free and open source project, and this release simply would not have been possible without your support, so thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who’s already active on our GitHub repo J.
We’re always willing to take high quality contributions. If you’d like to contribute, please check out our issue tracker for outstanding bugs and features which can be implemented. You can also help make NTVS better by reporting issues or helping out your fellow users on GitHub.
Get started with Node.js Tools 1.1 for Visual Studio
Download Node.js Tools 1.1 for Visual Studio to get started developing Node.js applications in Visual Studio. And as always… comments, compliments, or complaints? File an issue, join us on Gitter, or shoot us a tweet. We’d love to hear your feedback, especially if it comes in the form of a pull request.
Onwards!
 | Sara Itani (@mousetraps) Sara is a Software Engineer on the Node.js Tools for Visual Studio. At first, she was skeptical about Node.js – that is, until she realized its full potential…. Now, she’s all in, and excited to help it take over the world by bringing the power of Visual Studio to the Node.js community. She, for one, welcomes our new JavaScript overlords. :-) |
 | Arunesh Chandra (@aruneshc) Arunesh is a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft working on Chakra, the JavaScript engine that powers Microsoft Edge, and Node Tools for Visual Studio. He is currently working on supporting Chakra’s integration with Node.js and helping ship new versions of Node.js Tools for Visual Studio. |