Microsoft announced the availability of Visual Studio 2012 Release Candidate (RC) with .NET 4.5 today. The company has officially changed the name from Visual Studio 11, as it was known in developer preview and beta editions. Team Foundation Server 2012 RC is in this release as well.
Changes since the most recent version include:
- Support for async and await keywords in ASP.NET Web Forms
- Faster installation and a new option for customized install
- Performance improvements in the handling of large files, debugging, XAML, and editing in general
- New branding: in addition to the name change, Microsoft updated the logo to a more Metro-style design
- UI improvements to make Visual Studio 2012 more consistently follow Metro styling; changes include button updates and brighter color schemes (detailed information is available on the Visual Studio Blog)
- ASP.NET MVC defaults to HTML 5 and includes Entity Framework 5 support for migrations; new project templates have also been added
There are several updates in this version that are specific to Metro-style applications. In order to use this functionality, developers must first install the Windows 8 Release Preview, also announced today, first. The release include new Metro application templates, added JavaScript features, a new animations library, and performance improvements for Metro applications using XAML.
Updates to Team Foundation Server include a database restore wizard for migration, more organized context menus, process template feature enablement, a new Queries dropdown for pending changes, and UI improvements similar to those in Visual Studio.
For a complete list of updates in Visual Studio 2012, visit Visual Studio Corporate Vice President Jason Zander’s blog. Visual Studio 2012 including .NET 4.5 ships with a "Go Live" license and can be downloaded directly from Microsoft.