Hello everyone and welcome to our March update! We will bring you a series of improvements to the basic coding experience, such as a smoother experience in running Java programs, code completion optimization related to AWT projects, and better integration of Spring Boot projects with Azure. Let's get started!
User Experience Improvements for Running Java Programs
Previously, when launching a Java program, Visual Studio Code would display a generic message instead of specific Java class information. We heard from users that this wasn't very helpful, so we've improved the experience. In our latest plugin, we made the following improvements.
-
If launch.json exists, we will display the Launch configuration name as the progress title.
-
If launch.json does not exist, we will display the Main Class name as the progress title.
We hope this improvement will make running Java programs a smoother experience.
Smarter AWT-related code completion
The AWT (Abstract Window Toolkit) package in Java is a very popular tool for students to create GUIs for programs. In the past, we've hidden types from the AWT because it might otherwise interfere a lot with developer code completion. To enable code completion for AWT, you need to follow this documentation and turn it on manually.
We realize this isn't an ideal experience for students, so in the latest release we've improved code completion so you don't need to configure anything. Visual Studio Code Java will automatically detect if your code has AWT related classes. If this is the case, we will automatically enable code completion for the AWT package. Here is a demo.
Visualize real-time data for Azure applications via Spring plugins
When we introduced Spring Boot Dashboard's data visualization (Bean, Endpoint Mapping, and live memory views), we received great reviews from Spring developers. However, in previous features these visualizations were only available for on-premises applications and we have heard from users that they would like to see these visualizations for Spring applications running on the cloud.
We have good news - this functionality has recently been integrated into the Azure Spring Apps plugin, so you will be able to see live data from your running Azure Spring Apps applications. To use the full functionality, you need to install the Azure Spring Apps plugin ( described here ) and have a live instance of Azure Spring Apps. You can learn more about Azure Spring Apps .
Here is a demo.
Install the Java plugin package
To use all the features above, download and install the Extension Pack for Java on Visual Studio Code .
If you are a Spring developer and are writing Spring Boot-related programs, you can also download and install the Spring Boot plug-in package to get an exclusive development experience related to Spring Boot.
Feedback and Suggestions
In 2023, there will be many exciting updates for Java on Visual Studio Code, and as always, your feedback and suggestions are very important to us and will help shape our future products. There are several ways to leave us feedback:
-
Leave a comment under this article
-
Create an Issue on our GitHub repo
resource
The following links and resources can help you better understand Java on Visual Studio Code related information