News

Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 RC Now Available

Updates to TACO, AppInsight and HockeyApp are features of this release along with stability, performance, and bug fixes.

Microsoft's Visual Studio team this week has made available a release candidate for for Visual Studio 2015 Update 3.

In a blog announcing the latest RC, John Montgomery, Director of Program Management for Visual Studio, highlights a number of updates to the Tools for Apache Cordova, Application Insights and HockeyApp, along with stability, performance, and bug fixes to a number of the tools.

The Update for Tools for Apache Cordova, a.k.a. TACO, includes support for Cordova 6.1.1. It also includes TACO updates 9 and 10, which Montgomery notes "adds plugins for Intune, Azure engagement, security, and SQLite storage, as well as the ability to add plugins from the config designer either by npm package name or ID."

VS 2015 U3 RC also adds diagnostics tools events for ASP.NET 5 RC1 and ASP.NET Core RC2 projects within Developer Analytics Tools 7.0.1 (which itself is an integration of the Application Insights and HockeyApp diagnostics and telemetry tools). Searching has also been improved and enhanced.

The stability and performance updates span the tool suite, and include: VS IDE startup/subscription issues; VS IDE license and login error handling; code diagnostics performance improvements while coding with C#, VB and Roslyn; and enhancements to the Tools for Universal Windows Apps.

To download any of the newest Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 RC tools, go here.

About the Author

Michael Domingo is a long-time software publishing veteran, having started up and managed several developer publications for the Clipper compiler, Microsoft Access, and Visual Basic. He's also managed IT pubs for 1105 Media, including Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine and Virtualization Review before landing his current gig as Visual Studio Magazine Editor in Chief. Besides his publishing life, he's a professional photographer, whose work can be found by Googling domingophoto.

comments powered by Disqus

Featured

  • VS Code 1.130 Expands Agent Host and Review Tools

    Microsoft's latest weekly VS Code release advances shared agent sessions, multi-file change review, chat visibility and terminal navigation

  • Microsoft Agent Framework Makeover: Claws, Loops and Harnesses

    Microsoft's newly released Agent Framework Harness packages the loops, planning, memory, context management and safety controls that developers previously had to assemble around AI models themselves.

  • Visual Studio 2026 Gives Copilot Built-In Skills -- and Makes Them Prove Their Worth

    Microsoft is moving Agent Skills beyond bring-your-own instructions by shipping expert-authored workflows with the IDE, while keeping them off by default until testing shows their benefits justify the additional token use.

  • Copilot AI Billing Shock Met with Meters, Caps and Token-Saving Tools

    GitHub is layering spending limits, expanded credit allowances and increasingly granular usage reporting onto Copilot, while Microsoft is reworking Visual Studio and VS Code to expose -- and reduce -- the cost of agentic development.

Subscribe on YouTube