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VS Code Java Gets New Welcome Page with Features Tour

Microsoft's Java on Visual Studio Code dev team added a new welcome page that presents a tour of important features for using the popular code editor with the popular programming language.

It's an experimental feature offered in the February 2021 update of VS Code that helps developers using Java in Visual Studio Code to:

  • Find the most important features
  • Get started for the first project
  • Access references

"A common thing at first-time use is spending a couple of minutes browsing Welcome Page and trying features from there," said Yaojin Yang, senior program manager in the Developer Division at Microsoft, in a March 14 blog post introducing the latest update to Java on Visual Studio Code, support for which is provided via extensions.

"Users' satisfaction with the Welcome Page has direct reflection on their satisfaction with product and consequently affects their decision of adoption. Therefore, we believe it's worth an effort to experiment with a refreshed Java Welcome Page."

Java Feature Tour in Animated Action
[Click on image for larger, animated GIF view.] Java Feature Tour in Animated Action (source: Microsoft).

Users access the experimental feature tour with a java welcome command from the command palette that includes these presentations:

  • Open Project Folder
  • Project Explorer
  • Running and Debugging
  • Testing
New Extension Icons
[Click on image for larger view.] New Extension Icons (source: Microsoft).

Also new in the February 2021 update that brings the popular code editor to v.1.54 are redesigned icons for extensions, shown above.

"Their modern and concise looking underlines VS Code as a modern and lightweight tool. Hope you like the new icons," Yaojin said.

About the Author

David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.

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