Updated: July 9, 2020 (April 29, 2013)

Developer Tools Overview

As managing vice president, Rob Helm covers Microsoft collaboration and content management. His 25-plus years of experience analyzing Microsoft’s technology... more

Visual Studio 2012 and the .NET Framework 4.5 became generally available in Sept. 2012.

Visual Studio 2012 can be used with Windows 8 to implement Windows Store (also known as “Modern”) touch-enabled applications with templates and tools for the C++, C#, Visual Basic, and JavaScript programming languages.

Visual Studio 2012 delivers a refreshed user interface with less visual adornment, performance improvements over Visual Studio 2010, and features that could save developers time, such as an enhanced Solution Explorer (where developers navigate to software project files and components).

Several new features focus on development with JavaScript and HTML, such as the ability to debug on any browser installed on the development machine.

Other changes enhance application life-cycle management by helping development teams, IT operations personnel, and application users work together better to design, develop, and manage software.

Visual Studio 2012 includes a new release of LightSwitch, which is a lightweight development environment for data-driven business applications. Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 adds the ability to build LightSwitch applications using JavaScript and HTML, rather than using Silverlight, which was previously the only framework supported.

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