Visual Studio Code tweaks problem navigation, screencast mode

Visual Studio Code 1.63, a new release of Microsoft’s code editor published December, offers new capabilities in areas such as navigation, command display, and extensions. Downloadable from the Visual Studio Code website, Visual Studio Code 1.63 also is known as the November 2021 release.

Among the new capabilities, developers now can define the sort order for Go to Next Problem and Go to Previous Problem navigation. Previously, the order of navigation was based on severity, showing errors first, then warnings, then the rest. 

A new Problems: Sort Order setting now lets users navigate problems either by severity or position. When using "problems.sortOrder": "position", a warning on line 5 will be shown before an error on line 13, for example.

Another new feature lets developers choose to show command names as they trigger them via keyboard shortcuts in screencast mode. Developers can use the ScreenCast Mode: Keyboard Shortcuts format (screencastMode.keyboardShortcutsFormat) setting to configure this behavior.

Elsewhere in Visual Studio Code 1.63, pre-release extensions are supported, enabling users to opt in to install them and try out the latest features from extensions. An additional Install Pre-Release version option is included in the extension Install drop-down menu.

Meanwhile, colour themes available in the Visual Studio Marketplace can be previewed prior to installation. The NPM scripts view shows more details about scripts. Also, a new setting, npm.scriptExplorerExclude, lets users specify scripts to exclude from the NPM scripts view.

A notebook.markup.fontSize setting lets users control the font size of the notebook Markdown content while syntax highlighting is supported for fenced code blocks inside Markdown cells.

In addition, TypeScript 4.5 ships with Visual Studio Code 1.63 and method signature completions let developers quickly override methods and implement interface methods.

For Unicode, uncommon invisible characters in source code now are highlighted by default. When completing JSX attributes in JavaScript and TypeScript, VS Code now automatically will insert an attribute value.

Delving deeper, the Extension Pack for Java now has an in-product welcome experience to help users configure and learn about Java in VS Code.

Furthermore, in VS Code for the Web, now in preview, a new keyboard shortcut has been added to the Files hub in Azure Repos. When in a repository in the Files hub, press . to open the repository in https://vscode.dev. Last month’s release, Visual Studio Code 1.62, focused on areas such as search icons and the workbench.