Yes, VS Code is free for individual users or for commercial use. Visual Studio Code is a code editor with support for development operations like debugging, task running, and version control, while Visual Studio is a fully featured IDE (integrated development environment) that can handle more complex workflows. What is the difference between Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio? It comes with built-in support for JavaScript, TypeScript and Node.js and has a rich ecosystem of extensions for other languages and runtimes (such as C++, C#, Java, Python, PHP, Go. That’s it.Visual Studio Code is a lightweight but powerful source code editor from Microsoft that is available for Windows, macOS and Linux. It opens on but you can change the port by editing the package.json file.Do not close the command line prompt until you’re done coding in your app for the day.Lite-server is watching your files and refreshes the page as soon as you make changes to any html, js or css files.Īnd if you have VS Code configured to auto save (menu File / Auto Save), you see changes in the browser as you type! Wait a second and index.html is loaded and displayed in your default browser served by your local web server! In the same terminal window (command prompt in Windows) run this command: (Assuming you have an index.html file in your project folder). This will install lite-server (defined in package.json), a static server that loads index.html in your default browser and auto refreshes it when application files change. In a terminal window (command prompt in Windows) opened on your project folder, run this command: Add a package.json file to the project folder Somewhere in your drive, create a new folder for your web app.ģ. It comes with npm (the package manager for acquiring and managing your development libraries) The following procedure is valid for MAC or PC. Please note: this is for your Development Environment only, not Production! What works for me might not suit your need, your mileage might vary. I chose to use the following procedure, which is quite simple yet powerful. If you are building a client side SPA, such as an Angular app, it is crucial to develop and test in the context of a web server ( So nothing built-in so far, but no worries, there are at least 1 thousand way to setup a local web server. One of the things you will find the most surprising, is that unlike its big brother Visual Studio which has IIS Express, VS Code does not come with a built-in web server…

It is the start of a New Year and you have decided to try Visual Studio Code, good resolution!

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