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Visual Studio Code Update Now Uses ECMAscript 6

Also noteworthy: weird keyboard layout problem encountered by developers on OSX -- fixed.

Visual Studio Code marches ever closer to full point release, with a January update that includes a quartet of new support features. Meanwhile, the 0.10.6 update was released in a quick follow up to version 0.10.5, which went out with a quirky keyboard issue affecting those using VSC with OSX.

VSC 0.10.6 now uses ECMAscript 6 as the default when working with JavaScript files. "This means you don't need to create jsconfig.json files to enable new syntax and by default you get suggestions for ES6-types," writes Microsoft Senior Customer Program Manager, Ed Price, in a blog. "At the same time, the grammar used to colorize JavaScript was also updated to support the ES6 syntax."

Ed notes that the team's goal is to use the actor-oriented Salsa programming language "to improve JavaScript and JSX support." For those who want to use VSC with JSX, he provides a work-around in the blog.

VSC also is updated to use TypeScript 1.7.5, and the Emmet text editing plugin, which allows for native-like editing of JSX and TSX files from VSC.

In a related note, developers a few weeks ago reported problems with VSC 0.10.5 crashing on startup right after the update. Mainly, it affected those working with OSX, and more precisely it was traced to users working with JIS keyboard layout on a Mac. The VSC team rendered a fix, but users with those keyboards had to temporarily revert back to version 0.10.3 before the fix. A discussion of the issue can be viewed on GitHub here. The issue has since been fixed and moot with VSC 0.10.6.

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