As a developer with some sense of design, I am not a big fan of Microsoft Visual Studio. The Graphic Design, User Interface and the  troublesome installation made me stay away from it for many years.

However, I recently got a chance to use the Visual Studio especially the online editor when I got an E-Commerce project using Netsuite. I’ve choose to use the Visual Studio Online “Monaco” editor as I am travelling a lot and I gotta work from anywhere using different computers. Surprisingly, it amazed me so far and I am loving it.

It’s just work like a piece of software that installed to your compute. It’s not only an editor but also an online GIT version control. What you need is just commit, push and pull after making changes to the files.

Great News! Now you can download the Visual Studio Code IDE (Updated 2017)

Now you can download this great IDE here.

For Visual Studio Online – Getting Started

To get started, you need Windows Azure account. If you just want to play with Windows Azure you can also take Windows Azure free trial here:  http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial-b/

Once you have Windows Azure account then follow this steps:

1. Log in to your  Windows Azure management portal.
2. Create new web site.
3. Open site settings and go to Configure page.
4. Scroll down and turn “Edit in Visual Studio Online” on.
5. Go to web site dashboard and click on “Edit in Visual Studio Online” link.
6. Now Visual Studio Online opens in new browser window and you can start building your site on the cloud.

Geeky Duck preferred the high contrast theme

You can change the editor theme  here 😉

The Amazing Syntax Helper

I am almost forgot that I am working on an online editor, the Syntax Help is simply amazing, it seems crawled all your files within your directory and works just like an offline software!

Instant update

Whenever you changed a file, the editor will somehow remember and store the changes until you commit and push it to the GIT

Survived the blackout test

I am so curious about the security of building things on an online editor, so I pulled out the power cord and restarted my laptop. Amazingly, it still show me the exactly unfinished file pending commit when I restarted my laptop.

Read more: Stop Microsoft From Installing Apps On Your PC Without Your Permission