What’s New in Visual Studio 2019?

Are you ready with Visual Studio 2019? If you are curious about what new features in Visual Studio 2019, you can check here.

For developers coming to the platform from the 2017 edition, the most in-yer-face change is what Microsoft calls the new “Start Window Experience”. Whereas before, devs would be dropped directly into the IDE, with the start page open, they now face a “streamlined launch experience”.

Microsoft reckons this will mean devs can get started more quickly, and the big window gives coders access to their most recent files, or some big buttons to clone or check-out code (GitHub and Azure DevOps get name-checks, obviously), manually track down files or create something new.

Best Cloud Visual Studio 2019 Hosting

Overall, though, if you need to take advantage of Microsoft technologies, Windows hosting can deliver a great service for a surprisingly low price. Read on for three top Windows hosting providers you might want to check out first.

1. ASPHostPortal

High value plans for the Windows hosting newbie

Windows hosting has a reputation for being costly, but ASPHostPortal’s shared Windows range shows it doesn’t have to be that way.

Prices start at $0.99 (£0.75) a month, yet even the most basic plan is better specified than some of the Linux competition. You get 1 website, 1GB web space and 10GB bandwidth, plus routine backups, 24/7 ticket support, a free SSL certificate thrown in.

There’s support for SQL import, SSI and dedicated app pools, and your plan will be running on Windows Server 2016 (many hosts are still using 2012).

Ramping up to the top-of-the-range Pro Windows plan gets 40 databases (400GB SSD), unlimited email accounts each 4GB email storage, regular malware scanning and an integrated Cloudflare-based CDN. Again, this is good value at only $50.99 (£40) a month.

These are shared plans and don’t give you full control over the server, but more flexible dedicated plans are also available at very low prices, and opting for Windows instead of Linux will cost from an extra $1.99 (£1.5) a month.

Factor in the one-month mone back guarantee and ASPHostPortal could be a sensible choice for novices looking to try out Windows hosting with the minimum of risk.

2. HostForLIFEASP.NET

Run ASP.NET, PHP 7, WordPress and more on the same Windows server

HostForLIFEASP.NET is a capable provider with a huge range of plans covering everything from basic shared products, managed WordPress and email hosting, to reseller plans, cloud server and dedicated servers.

HostForLIFEASP.NET’s Windows offerings include a capable Classic plan priced at €2.97 a month. This is a shared product, but a good one, with unlimited websites, subdomains, email addresses, disk space, bandwidth, and more. Highlights include free site migration, SSD storage as standard, virus scanning, automatic backups, free Let’s Encrypt SSL, Anycast DNS, and Cloudflare Free CDN for a claimed average of 200% faster page loads.

Your site will be hosted on Windows Server 2016. Windows Server 2016 debuted many new features – Nano Server, containers, ReFS, Linux Secure Boot support – but you won’t be using these capabilities on a shared hosting plan.

What you do get with the Swift plan is support for an array of current and legacy Microsoft products and standards: ASP.NET 2.x, 3.x and 4.x, classic ASP, .NET Core 2.0, ASP.NET MVC 4 or 5, IIS 8.5 and Silverlight 4 or 5. And if your needs are more cross-platform, there’s PHP 5.6, 7.0, 7.1 or 7.2 support, phpMyAdmin, and one-click installers for PrestaShop, WordPress, Drupal and more.

If shared hosting isn’t enough, HostForLIFEASP.NET also provides managed Windows cloud server plans. These are well specified and priced fairly from €12.99 a month, which represents decent value for the features and support you get.

3. UKWindowsHostASP.NET

Flexible mid-range hosting for cash-strapped power users

While there are plenty of low-cost shared Windows hosting packages around, they’re not the best choice for everyone. We suspect that many users who need a Windows website will also require more speed and functionality than the average customer, and budget hosting may not be good enough.

UKWindowsHostASP.NET’ Windows cloud server offers no less than 10 plan configurations, making it much easier to find and purchase the precise level of service you need.

The baseline specification is impressive. Every plan offers free site migrations, SSD storage, and 1Gbps network connectivity (100Mbps is common with other plans). You also get the ability to use Windows Server  2012 or 2016, along with fast response times for any support issues, and 99.999% uptime guaranteed overall.

The starter Starter plan offers relatively limited resources, with one CPU core, 8GB RAM, 1GB disk space and 20GB traffic per month. But it’s also good value at £1.00 a month. Those prices are for a 5 years billing cycle, too – no lengthy contract required.

Upgrading to a higher tier gets you more power. The mid-range Enterprise plan offers four CPU cores, 16GB RAM, unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth, and is priced at £11.00 a month.

Put it all together and these seem well-designed hosting plans which are powerful, configurable, with excellent support and a generous 30-day money-back guarantee. If basic Windows hosting isn’t enough, UKWindowsHostASP.NET could be worth a try.

Visual Studio IDE Offers Many Advantages for Developers

Microsoft’s Visual Studio is a mature and rich integrated development environment (IDE). There are three main versions of Visual Studio IDE: Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio Online (VSO).

Code development for Windows 10 — which includes mobile, desktop, Xbox and other supported platforms — is done in Visual Studio. Within the Visual Studio IDE, there are five versions: Visual Studio Community, Visual Studio Professional, Visual Studio Enterprise, Visual Studio Test Professional and MSDN Platforms.

The goal of each version of Visual Studio is to provide rich development tools to all developers globally on any platform. Development teams will be able to develop software for Web, mobile, server and desktop with Visual Studio.

The size and scope of the development team determines which version of Visual Studio organizations use. Visual Studio Community edition is good for a small team, or if a team is new to Visual Studio. Visual Studio Community is free. Larger teams will require either a Professional or Enterprise Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN) license that costs either $1,199 or $5,999.

Visual Studio IDE provides a rich selection of development languages. Currently, developers can develop apps with Visual Basic, C#, PHP, Objective-C, JavaScript and Visual C++. The API foundation for Microsoft development is called the .NET Framework, and provides support for language interoperability.

Visual Studio Code is a basic development tool that gives developers the ability to build cloud and Web applications for free. VS Code is available for download on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

VSO is the most interesting tool for mobile developers. Microsoft now includes Build Services for iOS, Windows and Android all in the cloud with VSO. VSO gives development teams a one-stop suite of tools to build apps, manage small to large teams, manage version control and build services.

Visual Studio Online is a set of tools that makes it much easier for continuous integration across different platforms. For instance, Apple’s Xcode, Google’s Android Studio and desktop versions of Microsoft’s Visual Studio can be connected to VSO. The focus of VSO is to make it is easy for teams to collaborate with each other to deliver apps much faster using agile tools, such as Kanban boards. There is support for version control repositories that support Team Foundation Version Control for Windows, Git for Xcode and even scalable repo. VSO starts as a free tool, with limited features. Basic support, which costs $20 per month, will likely meet the needs of many teams. Additional levels of access can be found on Visual Studio Online’s pricing information page.

Microsoft has strong support tools. Like Apple’s Xcode and Google’s Android Studio, there are online support forums, but you also have the option to call Microsoft and open a support ticket — there is a charge. Finally, there are many training centers globally that offer authorized Visual Studio training.