Microsoft Build, Microsoft’s annual developer conference, kicked off today in Seattle with several new announcements for the year. Among the major highlights of the event, the company announced ‘Visual Studio Online,’ an online code editor for developers.
In the private preview launch of Visual Studio Online, the company is positioning the product as a companion to Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code. The online editor is based on Microsoft’s popular free and open-source desktop code editor, Visual Studio Code. It will also mean that Visual Studio Online will also be supporting all the extensions that are currently available for Visual Studio Code, as well as popular features like the Visual Studio Code workspaces.
Besides these, Visual Studio Online will also come with built-in support for IntelliCode, a tool developed by Microsoft for AI-assisted development, and it will be available starting today.
Microsoft is also emphasizing on Visual Studio Online is a ‘companion’ instead of a developer’s default coding environment. It plans to let coders use the online editor as a tool to make quick edits, review a pull request or join a Live Share session.
If you are one of those coders that don’t want to wait for Microsoft to open the private preview to more users, there are also alternatives like Coder that can provide you with a remote Visual Studio Code environment.
