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Hands-On Labs Help Developers Try Out New Visual Studio for Mac 7.2 Alpha Preview

Visual Studio for Mac, building upon the previous Xamarin Studio IDE acquired by Microsoft, is out in a new preview along with hands-on labs that can help developers try out its new features.

The Visual Studio blog last week announced Visual Studio for Mac 7.2 Alpha, and its new features as listed by Microsoft include:

  • Docker containers -- Join the microservices revolution, by testing and deploying your ASP.NET Core Web apps to Docker containers. Visual Studio for Mac's Docker support lets you easily deploy to a container as well as debug projects across multiple containers. Check out the hands-on-lab below to get started!
  • Xamarin Live Player -- Get started building Xamarin mobile applications in minutes! Visit xamarin.com/live to learn how easy it is to try out mobile app development with your existing iOS or Android device and Visual Studio for Mac.
  • Azure Functions -- Build and deploy serverless code in the cloud. Functions can be accessed by mobile or server apps, scheduled or triggered, and you only pay for the time they run. Follow the hands-on-lab below to write your first Azure Function.
  • IoT projects -- Build, test, and deploy apps for Internet of Things devices. You can write IoT apps using C#, and deploy them to a Raspberry Pi, following our simple instructions.

Developers can put those new features through their paces in new hands-on labs.

Being added to the collection of existing labs are two new additions: "Deploying ASP.NET Core to a Docker Container" and "Serverless computing with Azure Functions."

"Both this week's labs just scratch the surface of the capabilities being demonstrated: Docker support enables new testing and deployment options, and Azure Functions opens up a new, easier way to interact with powerful Azure services," Microsoft's Craig Dunn said in last week's post.

Developers need to download Visual Studio for Mac and switch the IDE to the alpha channel because features such as serverless computing with Azure Functions -- which also requires installation of an extension -- are so new.

About the Author

David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.

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