The preview release of Visual Studio 17.5 has been announced with a number of improvements for developers editing C++ code, plus spell-checking for C#, C++, and Markdown files but the one that made us think deeply is colored braces.

Release 17.5 will replace the current version 17.4 which is a LTS (Long Term Servicing) release. Support for 17.4 will end in July 2024. 

Among the exciting improvements you can look forward to, the headlineone is the addition of colored brackets in C++ editing. Try not to hyperventilate. Colored braces may not sound much in thrill-a-minute terms, but in reality will actually be very useful.

What it will mean is that it's easier to work out which opening and closing braces go together. In added excitement, there will be different colors for curly braces, and the paired braces {} will have the same color. The feature is only available for C++ at the moment, developers using other languages will have to wait for later releases.

The deep thought that occurs to me is just - why did it take so long to think of this?

Another improvement is the addition of a spell checker that checks the spelling of all words inside comments, and names on declarations will be checked by separating camelCase and underscored words.

Elsewhere, the old search options for code and features have been combined into a new All-In-One search facility.

One option that you might see or might not see in this preview is a C++ Reimagined Member List. This is a feature that is only being gradually rolled out in the next Previews, so at first, only a subset of customers from those who have updated the latest Preview will see the Reimagined Member List. Reimagined Member List promotes the matching type items on the top of the member list so that customers can find member lists they look for faster. This is similar to the Predictive IntelliSense experimental feature that has been added to Visual Studio and which displays only the filtered matched types in the member list. Reimagined Member List is improved in the way that it brings up the matched items to the top of the unfiltered member list, making all items still available.

Preview 4 of Visual Studio 17.5 is available now.

More Information

Visual Studio Website

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