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Pesky WinForms Designer Tweaked in Visual Studio 2022 v17.10 Preview 2
"The simple fact of the matter is that 64-bit processes are not compatible with a 32-bit binary reference. As much as we'd like to have a simple fix for this scenario, there really isn't one."
With those words Microsoft closed a lingering 2021 Developer Community post: "WinForms .NET Framework Projects can't display the designer for 32bit references."
While not so simple, some fixes were proposed, including a new out-of-process designer for VS 2022 projects needing to mess with legacy 32-bit stuff.
With that put to bed, the team announced a tweak to that out-of-process designer that resulted in performance improvements in the server process TypeResolution service in Visual Studio 2022 v17.10 Preview 2.
"We are pleased to announce substantial performance improvements to the WinForms out-of-process designer," the dev team said in a March 12 post. "Notably, you'll find performance gains during scenarios that trigger server process restart and designer reload, such as project rebuilds or adjustments in project references. These enhancements have yielded remarkable design time performance improvements, ranging from 30 percent to 50 percent in a typical line of business applications."
Other highlights of Preview 2 include:
- Improve your code reviews with generated pull request descriptions: GitHub Copilot now assists in creating initial pull request descriptions, saving time and providing context for code reviews.
- View and address pull request comments in Visual Studio editor: Ability to view and address pull request comments directly in the editor.
[Click on image for larger view.] Navigate Between Files in PRs & Comments in Files Using Toolbar (source: Microsoft).
- Improve readability of Visual Studio with additional formatting options for text: "We've brought Italics as well as strikethrough and underline options to the available options for configuring the way your code text is displayed."
- SSDT support for VS in Arm64: SQL Server Developer Tools are now supported on ARM64 devices.
- Ability to export installed Marketplace extensions into a .vsconfig config file: Developer Community post said: "One hopes that it would be a relatively trivial thing for VS to maintain the necessary information and files so that they would be exported for installation to a newly installed system."
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.NET Counter profiler visualization with new UpDown and ObservableCounter instruments: New support for two "innovative metrics":
- UpDown enables real-time tracking of values with both incremental and decremental changes.
- ObservableCounter autonomously manages aggregated totals, offering customizable callback delegates for precise control.
- GC Insights in Managed Memory Window: New instruments for GC Insights in the Managed Memory window. "This feature provides a deeper understanding of your application's performance by shedding light on instances of induced GC."
About the Author
David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.