March 2021 update to Microsoft’s open source code editor features an inline menu for editing conditions and hit counts for function breakpoints, giving users more control. Credit: Thinkstock Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code 1.55, the latest version of the company’s popular code editor, offers improvements to breakpoints, thus improving user control. Published March 31, Visual Studio Code 1.55 shows an inline menu for editing conditions and hit counts for function breakpoints. Previously, the inline edit button would choose the condition to edit automatically. With the improvement, the menu should make flow easier and give more control to the user. Also, VS Code’s generic debugger UI now supports all data breakpoint access types defined in the Debug Adapter Protocol as context menu actions in the Variables view. Built on the Electron framework for cross-platform desktop application development, Visual Studio Code combines web technologies such as JavaScript with the speed and flexibility of native apps. It is geared to operations such as debugging, task running, and version control. The coding editor can be downloaded from visualstudio.com for deployment on Windows, Linux, or MacOS. Other improvements in Visual Studio Code 1.55: For accessibility, initial screen reader support has been added for multiple cursors. Also, the number of lines that a “Say All” command can read has been increased to 1,000 lines. It had been 100 lines. More upstream fixes are still needed, however, in order to have no limit at all. Icons for MacOS Big Sur have been updated, to match the style of Big Sur. Tab editor decorations now are on by default. To configure, use editor.decorations.colors and workbench.editor.decorations.badges. The Keyboard Shortcuts editor now is refactored to use the new table widget, so users can resize columns in the editor. For extension management, VS Code now detects extensions installed or uninstalled through the VS Code CLI. Extensions can be activated or deactivated in the active window and will be displayed in the Extensions view. The terminal now supports defined profiles, appearing in the terminal’s dropdown, to launch non-default shells. Users can select multiple cells in a Notebook using the mouse (Shift+Click) or keyboard shortcuts (Shift+Arrow). Once multiple cells are selected, developers then can cut, copy, paste, move, or duplicate selected cells. VS Code 1.55 follows VS Code 1.54, which was published March 4 and introduced Apple Silicon support. Development ToolsSoftware Development