VISUAL STUDIO 2013

Visual Studio 2013 (VS2013) is another release that adds important new technologies that I'll touch upon shortly. Among the most visible are some cosmetic changes, such as more than 400 modified icons that update the UI to a more colorful Windows 8 look. Others changes are nifty code editing efficiencies that appeared first in Visual Studio Power Tools add-ons, but are now officially integrated and supported. For example, editing improvements such as in-line code navigation and automatic bracket completion. But my favorite code editing improvement is the new scrollbar behavior: "Bar mode" is the traditional scrollbar operation, while "map mode" is something seen only in a few editors such as Sublime Text. In the VS2013 implementation, a miniaturized representation of the entire file being edited appears in a thin window down the right side of the edit panel (Figure 1). The map highlights the section of code that your cursor is located in and allows you to zoom in, thereby facilitating navigation in a large source file.