Debugger Canvas 1.1 Adds Easy On/Off, Improved Navigation

Write for InfoQ

Debugger Canvas, the tool that introduced 'Code Bubbles' to the Visual Studio Ultimate debugger, debuted early last summer to a great deal of excitement in the developer community. This week, Microsoft released Debugger Canvas 1.1 with new features and debugging performance improvements, in addition to bug fixes.

The new features in this release are:

• Debugger Canvas can be switched on or off during a debugging session, in order to toggle to and from the standard Visual Studio debugger
• Developers are now able to move up and down the call stack while in the canvas, using the mouse or keyboard
• Multiple threads can be viewed at one time, with each identified by a different color
• Recursive calls only display one bubble
• Users can make edits to the code in a bubble (this was available in the original version as well, but is now enabled by default)
• IntelliTrace logs are viewable directly on the canvas (under development; can be enabled under Options)

Microsoft states that because Debugger Canvas depends on technologies present only in Ultimate, it is still not available for other versions of Visual Studio. (As has been reported previously on InfoQ, those wishing to try it out can do so by installing the free trial of Visual Studio Ultimate, or by using the free Virtual Machine containing Visual Studio Ultimate.) The product supports Visual Basic and C#, but not C++ or other languages.

Debugger Canvas 1.1 is available to download directly from Microsoft Labs.

Related Topics:

• Development
• .NET
• Debugger Canvas
• Visual Studio
• Debugging
• Debuggers

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