Bing Developer Assistant for Visual Studio 2012 is also Available!

Bing Developer Assistant for Visual Studio combines the functionality of two popular Visual Studio extensions into one: Sample Browser and Bing Code Search. This updated feature enables developers to find and reuse over 19 million of code snippets and code sample projects from within the Visual Studio IDE.  The plugin is now also enabled with Bing contextual search that currently helps – root causing compiler errors and code lookup.

 

What's New with Bing Developer Assistant?

  1. Compile Error Assistant 1.0 for C#/VB   (newly released in December)
  2. API Help 1.0 for C#/VB    (newly released in December)
  3. New Visual Studio IntelliSense experience to find code samples for API
  4. Sample Browser one-stop shop
  5. Local code search

 

1. Compile Error Assistant 1.0 for C# & VB

Today when you get compilation error in C# or VB, you need to copy/paste the error message in the search and then modify the query so that the context is taken into account. All that is thing of the past. Now, when you get a compilation error in your project, don’t panic!  With just one button click, the new Compile Error Assistant gathers the error info, and all the relevant context (e.g. Project Type = Microsoft Azure), and finds the best potential solutions from the web for you using the power of contextual Bing search.  Right click on the compiler error and invoke “Bing Contextual Search”.

The contextual info that is automatically gathered includes

Now the plugin automatically searches the web through the power of Bing, and presents the most relevant web pages for your problem’s context in the form of Bing results page. In the below example, the top result pages will help solve the current compilation error. All this with a single click on error!

The results page also provides you with options to refine search if this did not solve your problem, and you can use the Bing search to formulate refined queries and help us refine the results next time.

 

2. API Help 1.0 for C# and VB

If you want to know more about a class or method or comments, it is pretty easy now. Bing Contextual Search button is added to the code editor.  You can select some text in the code editor, right click and issue a Bing Contextual Search.  It automatically gathers the selected text, your project type, language, etc and do a smart Bing search.

3. New Visual Studio IntelliSense experience

Bing Developer Assistant delivers a major enhancement in Visual Studio IntelliSense. While coding, a relevant code snippet related to your current API will be automatically displayed in the IntelliSense window which is powered by Bing Code Search. Code snippets are short piece of code that you can easily learn and copy.  

You can copy the code, or click the source URL to view where the code snippet comes from, or click “Search More” to find more code samples related to the API.  In the current release, the new IntelliSense experience is only available to C#, but teams are working to expand the functionality to more programming languages in the future. 

 

4. Sample Browser one-stop shop

The Sample Browser window is now your one-stop shop for code samples.  By entering your programming needs on the Visual Studio toolbar, you will get both code snippets and code sample projects.  Code sample projects are complete Visual Studio demo solutions that you can download, build and run.  With the new Bing Developer Assistant for Visual Studio, a world of code samples are now at your fingertips. 

 

5. Local code search

We have also added a feature requested by our users – local code search.  The new plugin enables you to search for code samples among your local or downloaded sample projects even when you are disconnected from the Internet.   You can configure Visual Studio to index your local sample folders in Tools / Options.

The IntelliSense experience and the Sample Browser main window are still fully functional in the offline situation.  What’s even better, it allows you to open the Visual Studio sample project that contains the code snippet with one click. 

 

Start experiencing Bing Developer Assistant for Visual Studio and download it today! 

 

Happy coding!

The Bing Developer Assistant Team (bingdevassistant@microsoft.com)