VS 2012 RC Key Notes (What is new in VS2012 RC, Feature Summary)

Visual Studio 2012 RC (Earlier known as Visual Studio 2011 beta)  has been released on 31 may 2012. It has lot of cool productivity feature and also several new language and framework changes that will new way of writing very responsive asynchronous application.

This release have several new enhancement based on community feedback mainly branding , UI and performance, for specific details about What is new in Visual Studio 2012 RC check out jasonz`s blog.

Rest of core feature summary are consolidated below.

Related Titles

VS2011 vs VS2012

What happens  to Visual studio 11

Core Feature Summary of VS2012 (Formally VS2011)

Compatibility Enhancement

Since project files are same in both VS2011 and VS2010 so you can open Visual Studio 2010 projects in Visual Studio 11 and continue working from Visual Studio 2010 without any problems

IDE Enhancement

1. Simplified Toolbar :Tool bar is much simpler and by default have only most frequently used command
2. Quick launch box (Command Search) : This feature I would love to have.Search for and execute any command you need. You do not need to look through all the menus or memorize shortcuts. Start typing a command name in the quick launch box,  
3. Search in Solution Explorer: The new Solution Explorer has also added an integrated search.
4. Pin Tab: Visual Studio now provides the ability to pin tabs. This enables you to easily keep the files you use most on the left-hand side of the tab well. Any other documents you open will not affect your pinned tabs.
5. Additional Document Tab:Additionally, Visual Studio 11 provides an option to keep all pinned tabs on a separate row of the tab well. 
6. Simulating the multiple monitor support: In Visual Studio 11 you have the ability to float windows outside the IDE (to different monitors if you want) and dock them together.
7. Documents Preview:Another interesting new feature is the ability to preview documents. This feature becomes useful when debugging your code, as each file you step through will not be opened in a different tab but in the same one. This is really great feature.
8. Searchable Add Reference Dialog box: Visual Studio 11 lists all the references in the same place, so you can scroll through, search and select the ones you will use or have previously added. Additionally, references are now added asynchronously so the development environment remains responsive.
9. Improved responsiveness:Visual Studio 11 has improved responsiveness, particularly around long-running operations, memory utilization and features that take full advantage of your computer’s hardware. You can work on your project and interact with the environment while a build is running.It will be really helpful in large project where builds took very long time

Programming Enhancement with .NET Framework 4.5

1. Task-Based Asynchronous Pattern (TAP): it is major addition to language capabilities in 4.5.Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 introduces new language features in C# and Visual Basic to provide a new foundation for asynchrony in .NET programming. This new foundation makes asynchronous programming very similar to synchronous programming.
2. This feature will be a great enhancement to build responsive application without changing your tradition programming style.
3. New Keyword asyncand await :The async keyword is one of the new keywords that .NET Framework 4.5 provides. The Async keyword communicates to the compiler that the current method will contain asynchronous code.
4. Caller Information : It allow to pass caller function`s such as file name.There are three types of caller info can be passed to called function We could get the below information of caller method :

• CallerFilePathAttribute Full path of the source
  file that contains the caller. This is the file path at compile time.
• CallerLineNumberAttribute Line number in the
  source file at which the method is called.
• CallerMemberNameAttribute Method or property
  name of the caller.