Introduction

AS A TOOL FOR DEVELOPERS, Visual Studio stands head and shoulders about its competition. The team responsible for developing Visual Studio has always put the productivity of people who code for a living at the top of their priority list. This version continues this tradition. Visual Studio always incorporates the latest advances in Microsoft's premier programming languages (Visual Basic and C#). But the march toward both cloud-based computing and open source has become exorable, and Visual Studio 2015 demonstrates how both of those concepts can be integrated into the product. In theory, it is possible to create any .NET application using tools as simple as Notepad and a command-line window. But the typical developer would never think to do so. The tools and utilities that come with Visual Studio do more to increase the productivity of developers than any other single piece of software currently available. Visual Studio 2015 is no different from previous versions in this respect. It includes a host of improvements and features that are aimed at making the life of a developer easier.

Visual Studio 2015 is an enormous product no matter which way you look at it. It can be intimidating to newcomers and difficult for even experienced .NET developers to find what they need. And that's where this book comes in. Professional Visual Studio 2015 looks at every major aspect of this developer tool, showing you how to harness each feature and offering advice about how best to utilize the various components effectively. It shows you the building blocks that make up Visual Studio 2015, breaking the user interface down into manageable chunks for you to understand. It then expands on each of these components with additional details about exactly how they work, both in isolation and in conjunction with other parts of Visual Studio 2015, along with tools that are not included in the out-of-the-box product, to make your development efforts even more efficient.

Who This Book Is For

Professional Visual Studio 2015 is for developers who are new to Visual Studio as well as those programmers who have some experience but want to learn about features they may have previously overlooked.

Even if you are familiar with the way previous versions of Visual Studio worked, you may want to at least skim over Part I. These chapters deal with the basic constructs that make up the user interface. In the past, the basic interface didn't change much from version to version. But as soon as you launch Visual Studio 2015 for the first time, you'll notice that the user interface has gone through some significant changes. While you can get by without Part I, some of the changes in Visual Studio 2015 can make you a more efficient developer. And, after all, that's what you're looking to get out of this book.

If you're just starting out, you'll greatly benefit from the first part, where basic concepts are explained and you're introduced to the user interface and how to customize it to suit your own style.

What This Book Covers

Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 is arguably the most advanced integrated development environment (IDE) available for programmers today. It is based on a long history of programming languages and interfaces and has been influenced by many different variations on the theme of development environments.

Visual Studio 2015 is not a revolutionary release. However, regardless of the type of application you're creating, there are tweaks that have been made-some small, some less so (ASP.NET v.Next, for example). Familiarity with the changes helps you perform your job better. For this reason, as well as to help newcomers to Visual Studio, this book covers the breadth of the product. Along the way, you will become more familiar and comfortable with the interface.

Visual Studio 2015 comes in several versions: Community, Professional, and Enterprise. The majority of this book deals with the Professional Edition of Visual Studio 2015, but some chapters utilize features found only in the Enterprise edition. If you haven't used this edition before, read through Chapters 54 to 57 for an overview of the features it offers over and above the Professional Edition.

How This Book Is Structured

This book is divided into 12 parts:

• Integrated Development Environment: This book's first five chapters are dedicated to familiarizing you with the core aspects of Visual Studio 2015, from the IDE structure and layout to the various options and settings you can change to make the user interface synchronize with your own way of doing things.
• Getting Started: In this part, you learn how to take control of your projects and how to organize them in ways that work with your own style.
• Digging Deeper: Though the many graphical components of Visual Studio that make a programmer's job easier are discussed in many places throughout this book, you often need help when you're in the process of actually writing code. This part deals with features that support the coding of applications such as IntelliSense, code refactoring, and creating and running unit tests. The .NET Framework supports dynamic languages and strengthens feature parity between the two primary .NET languages, C# and VB. This part covers these languages, as well as looking at a range of features that will help you write better and more consistent code.
• Rich Client Applications and Web Applications: For support with building everything from Office add-ins to cloud applications, Visual Studio enables you to develop applications for a wide range of platforms. These two parts cover the application platforms that are supported within Visual Studio 2015, including ASP.NET and Office, WPF, Silverlight 5, and ASP.NET MVC. Also, Chapter 20 takes a look into the support provided for the Windows Store applications and Chapter 22 examines the tooling for Universal Windows Apps.
• Data: A large proportion of applications use some form of data storage. Visual Studio 2015 and the .NET Framework include strong support for working with databases and other data sources. This part examines how to use DataSets, the Visual Database Tools, LINQ, Synchronization Services, and ADO.NET Entity Framework to build applications that work with data. It also shows you how you can then present this data using Reporting.
• Application Services: Through the course of building an application, you are likely to require access to services that may or may not reside within your organization. This part covers core technologies such as WCF, WF, and Application Services that you can use to provide functionality to these services.
• Configuration and Resources: The built-in support for configuration files allows you to adjust the way an application functions on the fly without having to rebuild it. Furthermore, resource files can be used to both access static data and easily localize an application into foreign languages and cultures. This part of the book shows how to use .NET configuration and resource files.
• Debugging: Application debugging is one of the more challenging tasks developers have to tackle, but correct use of the Visual Studio 2015 debugging features will help you analyze the state of the application and determine the cause of any bugs. This part examines the debugging support provided by the IDE.
• Build and Deployment: In addition to discussing how to build your solutions effectively and get applications into the hands of your end users, this part also deals with the process of upgrading your projects from previous versions.
• Customizing and Extending Visual Studio: If the functionality found in the previous part isn't enough to help you in your coding efforts, Visual Studio 2015 is even more extensible. This part covers the automation model, how to write custom extensions, and then how to use the Microsoft Extensibility Framework (MEF) to extend Visual Studio 2015.
• Visual Studio Enterprise: The final part of the book examines the additional features only available in the Enterprise version of Visual Studio 2015. In addition, you'll also learn how the Team Foundation Server provides an essential tool for managing software projects.

Though this breakdown of the Visual Studio feature set provides the most logical and easily understood set of topics, you may need to look for specific functions that will aid you in a particular activity. To address this need, references to appropriate chapters are provided whenever a feature is covered in more detail elsewhere in the book.

What You Need to Use This Book

To use this book effectively, you'll need only one additional item - Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Professional Edition. With this software installed and the information found in this book, you'll be able to get a handle on how to use Visual Studio 2015 effectively in a very short period of time.

This book assumes that you are familiar with the traditional programming model, and it uses both the C# and Visual Basic (VB) languages to illustrate features within Visual Studio 2015. In addition, it is assumed that you can understand the code listings without an explanation of basic programming concepts in either language. If you're new to programming and want to learn Visual Basic, please take a look at Beginning Visual Basic 2015 by Bryan Newsome. Similarly, if you are after a great book on C#, track...