Paul Krill
Editor at Large

Visual Studio Code introduces floating editor windows

news
Dec 8, 20232 mins

Visual Studio Code 1.84 allows you to move editors or editor groups out of the main window into their own windows.

windows window panes wall by pedro figueras
Credit: Pedro Figueras

Microsoft has released Visual Studio Code 1.85, aka the November 2023 edition of the company’s signature open source code editor. This latest update to Visual Studio Code features floating editor windows and the ability to visualize JavaScript heap snapshots.

Introduced December 7, Visual Studio Code 1.85 can be downloaded for Windows, Linux, or Mac.

With the new release, developers can move editors out of the main window into their own lightweight windows. Changes to an editor in one window will immediately apply to all other editor windows. To create a floating editor window, users can drag an editor out of the current window and drop it into an empty space on the desktop. New commands also are available to move or copy editors or editor groups into their own windows.

V8 heap snapshots saved as .heapsnapshot now can be visualized in Visual Studio Code, both in a traditional tabular view and in a graphical representation of the retainers of a given memory object. Heap snapshots can be captured via the Take Performance Profile command while debugging JavaScript code, and they can be captured via the Memory tab in browser DevTools.

Visual Studio Code 1.85 follows Visual Studio Code 1.84, which arrived November 1 and featured audio cues, and two subsequent point release updates, versions 1.84.1 and 1.84.2.

Other new features and improvements in Visual Studio Code 1.85:

  • To improve the keyboard experience, tooltips now are shown on keyboard focus for items with custom hovers such as Activity Bar and Status Bar items.
  • Types in JavaScript and TypeScript inlay hints now are interactive.
  • Developers now can choose which extensions to auto-update.
  • Developers also now can more conveniently navigate through Python projects’ type relationships when using the Pylance language server. This can be helpful when using large codebases with complex type relationships.
  • An Incoming/Outgoing section has been introduced in the Source Control section to display incoming and outgoing changes for the current branch compared to its remote.
  • For the GitHub Copilot AI developer tool, the inline chat prompt history now is persisted across VS Code sessions.
  • Sticky Scroll has been been extended to all tree views, enabling users to more easily navigate project trees. This feature is in preview.
  • A multi-diff editor, also in preview, allows users to view changes in multiple files in one scrollable view.
Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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