Microsoft has finally released its Visual Studio 2017 for Mac after its initial preview last November 2016. The Visual Studio supports Visual Studio Code for Mac and is free to download from their website.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 is an integrated development environment or IDE which allows MacOS users to create the web and mobile apps as well as games using Unity and cloud apps using .NET Core and Xamarin.

Aside from creating apps, Visual Studio 2017 is also equipped with a powerful debugger, full-featured source editor, and Git integration. Here is a much closer look at Visual Studio.

Web Tooling Support For More Awesome Apps

Visual Studio for Mac is equipped with web tooling support for JSON, HTML, and CSS which are all important file formats to create a more responsive and awesome looking app.

 JSON, which stands for JavaScript Object Notification is a type of file format that logically arranges data and makes it more readable as possible. This file format is essential because it makes AJAX-powered websites load much faster without having to refresh it again and again.

It also has Xamarin support enabling users to create a rich native experience for different operating systems, such as MacOS, Android, tvOS, iOS, and watchOS. This support also allows users to share XAML-based UI code without limiting the access to each specific platform.

Launch Multiple Projects At Once

Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 for Mac is also equipped with a "Solution Run Configuration" feature that allows developers to launch multiple projects simultaneously. This process is important because apps can be easily debugged and closely monitored how they interact with the backend service.

Aside from releasing the Visual Studio 2017 for free, Microsoft also released a preview for an improved Outlook for Mac for Gmail users. They also released the new Surface Laptop, which is touted as the biggest competitor for the Mac.