Yesterday, Microsoft finally unleashed Visual Studio 2017 upon the masses, but the company isn't stopping there. Spotted by Twitter user and Microsoft leakster, WalkingCat, there's also a new Visual Studio Preview, which is pretty much like the Windows Insider Program, except it's designed for the company's integrated development environment (IDE).
Visual Studio Preview is made for enthusiasts that want to get their hands on the latest "pre-release Visual Studio innovations, bug fixes, and platform support, and you don’t mind providing us with feedback to help make Visual Studio better." Microsoft says that all new tools and platform support will show up in Preview first.
Unsurprisingly, the firm says that you cannot use Preview to build shipping apps, and is not supported in production environments. It's the same rule as is used for Windows 10 SDK Previews, the most recent of which is 15042. The good news is that you should have no problem running regular Visual Studio and Preview side-by-side, and on top of that, it won't double the size of your installation because the two IDEs share components.
Microsoft also says that it strongly recommends installing the edition of the IDE that you have a license for. If you don't have a paid license for the app, you can install Visual Studio Community.
When you're using it, the firm does ask that you provide feedback, which you can do through the Help menu. There are separate options for "Report a Problem" and "Provide a suggestion" that you can use.
To download Visual Studio Preview, you can find it right here.
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