For example, Visual Studio 2017 now starts up three times faster, project load times are four times faster, and build speeds on C++ projects are also noticeably quicker, Montgomery wrote.

Microsoft and Perfecto Mobile announced new features for mobile app testing in Visual Studio and Microsoft Azure.

Other new features promise make it easier for Visual Studio developers to connect apps to cloud services including Azure Mobile Apps data storage and authentication.

Xamarin is furthering its mission to make C# the mobile-development language of choice by allowing iOS coders to use Microsoft's Visual Studio.

Telerik has developed a service called Icenium to automate the otherwise tedious task of using traditional integrated development environments (IDE) for mobile app development.

Developers using Microsoft's Visual Studio Mobile Center back-end service hub can now directly update JavaScript-based apps via the CodePush service.

eWeek Labs' first look at code reveals that the biggest feature change in Microsoft Corp.'s Visual Studio .Net Beta 2 release is its support for graphical mobile application development.