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What's New in Visual Studio Code 1.26 (July Update)
The July 2018 release of Visual Studio Code features new functionality for navigation, applying Quick Fixes to address problems, working with extensions and more.
Here's a quick rundown of the new features, with links pointing to more details available in the announcement post:
- Breadcrumbs: In the navigation department, the editor now sports a breadcrumbs navigation bar above its contents that lets developers jump to symbols and files in a workspace.
- Quick Fixes from Problems panel: When reviewing warnings and errors, hovering over or selecting a problem item brings up a lightbulb icon that indicates available Quick Fixes. The fixes can be implemented by clicking on the icon or by opening the context menu for the problem item.
- User setup on Windows: This functionality, announced as a preview in the June update, provides a smoother background update experience that doesn't need elevation to Administrator privileges to install.
- Terminal column selection; In VS Code's integrated terminal, column selection -- selecting blocks of text -- is done via an Alt+click key combination.
- Add all missing imports: The "add missing import" Quick Fix can now be enacted for all missing imports in a JavaScript/TypeScript file via a single action.
- JSX tag completion: Developers can now work with JSX tags -- used in React coding -- in JavaScript/TypeScript files the same way they do in HTML files, gaining the ability to auto-close JSX tags. If wanted, this new functionality can be turned off.
- Better JS/TS error reporting: Speaking of JavaScript/TypeScript functionality, error messages for those technologies are now smarter and clearer, the VS Code team says, via concise, clear messages, of which some now contain links to relevant source code.
- Improved extension search: Developers now can more easily search for extensions by adding IntelliSense autocompletions to the extension search field. "This will help you refine your extension searches to filter results based on things like category and install state; or sort results by name, rating, or install count," the team said.
- Extension Pack management: A revisited Extension Pack experience now uses a new property called extensionPack instead of extensionDependencies in package.json to define an Extension Pack. "This is because extensionDependencies is mainly used to define functional dependencies among extensions that prevents uninstalling or disabling an extension dependency without uninstalling or disabling the dependent extension," the team said.
- Preview: Settings editor: This release reflects work by the VS Code team to improve a GUI for editing settings. Although still in preview, it can be tried out under the Preferences menu: "Open Settings (Preview.)" For example, the rich settings description display, "Table of Contents" tracks scrolling. The team is soliciting developer feedback via the GitHub issue.
Other improvements include: a new View menu layout, copy relative path action and offline mode for the Workbench; improved multi-line support and rendering improvements for the Integrated Terminal; the conversion of named imports to namespace imports, and JSX folding, under Languages; better stop session and smart step debugging functionality in the Debugging department; themable custom tool and menu bar for Windows and Linux provided as Preview Features; and QuickInput API, extensionPack declaration and webview titlebar icons to boost Extension Authoring.
The VS Code personally thanked by name 27 community volunteers who contributed to the core functionality of the July update of the open source code editor, along with many more volunteers who helped improve the Language Server Protocol functionality and many other features.
About the Author
David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.