Microsoft Build, the annual developer conference, kicked off today in Seattle with several new announcements for the year. Among the major highlights of the event, Microsoft announced ‘Visual Studio Online,’ an online code editor for developers.
The company is pitching Visual Studio Online 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.
So Visual Studio Online is going to support all the extensions used by developers for Visual Studio Code and this includes popular features like Visual Studio Code workspaces.
Besides these, the online code editor will also come with built-in support for IntelliCode — a tool developed by Microsoft for AI-assisted development and it is available starting today.
Microsoft is stressing a lot about Visual Studio Online being a ‘companion.’ So the company is not aiming to make it a developer’s default coding environment. It rather wants coders to see the online editor as a tool to make quick edits, review a pull request or join a Live Share session.
Visual Studio Online is now available in private preview. However, if you don’t want to wait until Microsoft opens the private preview to more users, you can use similar tools from startups like Coder, which provide a remote Visual Studio Code environment.
