Microsoft is working on improving the user experience of its software development environment, Visual Studio. The company recently revealed its Visual Studio Roadmap for the next two quarters.

According to Microsoft, the road – map is just a peek into what’s next for Visual Studio and while it includes some of the significant features the team is working on and a rough time frame of when they will be available, it is not a full list of what’s to come.

Visual Studio 2017 will continue to follow the company’s release rhythm implemented after Visual Studio 2015. Instead of large quarterly releases, Microsoft aims to make smaller and more frequent minor updates. Minor updates will ship about every six weeks, and servicing updates will ship more quickly.

The company in early April released version 15.7 preview 3 of Visual Studio 2017. The release included updates to Universal Windows Platform development, C++ development improvements, updates to Xamarin and .NET mobile development, the ability to configure installation locations, debugger support and live unit testing improvements.

Features expected between now and June include a new connected service for Azure Key Vault in C# apps, continuous delivery for Azure Functions using Visual Studio, ability to switch Git branches faster, JIT debugging for .NET Core, improved startup and solution load performance, and the ability to set a native thread name with the SetThreadDescription API in C++.

Currently still in preview is Micro – soft’s Android Designer Split View, Visual Studio Live Share Preview, and Automatic iOS provisioning from Visual Studio.

While Q2 will include updates for all workloads, its .NET Core workloads, C++, Universal Windows Platform, Python development and mobile development areas will get a lot of focus, the company announced.

The Q3 release will focus on desktop development with C++ and Visual Studio extension development. Features planned for Q3 include improved continuous delivery capabilities, multicursor and multi-selection editing, C++ debugger enhancements, extension packs, ability to publish to the Visual Studio Marketplace using a command line, and more improvements to the startup and solution load performance.

Much of this work will be detailed at Microsoft’s Build conference May 7-10. And many Microsoft partners will be on hand to discuss support for these new features. In the meantime, this showcase provides a look at many of those partners and the tools they provide to extend and enhance the Visual Studio ecosystem, including Visual Studio Team Services, Microsoft Azure, SQL Server and more.

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