At Build 2023 back in June, Microsoft announced a new form of storage volume for Windows 11: Dev Drive. In October 2023, support for Dev Drive was shipped as a Windows Update and now available to anyone using the latest version of Windows 11. 

Windows 10 May 2021 Update (version 21H1) is now available to seekers who want to install it right now. Initially, it will be available to select devices running Windows 10 version 2004 or later. If you have a compatible device, and you can't wait for the rollout to complete, go to the Windows Update settings page and check for the new update. 

Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2) is one of the most popular features for developers on Windows 10 and 11. It has recently been made available on Windows Server 2022. With this addition, you can now run Linux containers on WSL 2 on Windows Server 2022 for development and testing purposes. 

These are the customer-reported issues addressed in 15.9.4:

• Visual Studio 15.9 duplicate loads open files on solution reload.
• All users can now connect to on-premise TFS servers through Team Explorer.
• Visual Studio 15.8.3 no longer expands metadata in ItemDefinitionGroup for project-defined items during GUI builds (worked in Visual Studio 15.8.2).
• Visual Studio has multiple tabs for the same file.
• System.ArgumentException: The parameter is incorrect. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070057 (E_INVALIDARG)).
• LNK4099 PDB not found.
• Asset Catalog empty.
• /analyze fails for C++ code using /ZW.
• C++ compiler code optimization bug.
• Xamarin.iOS can't select image asset for Image View.
• iOS projects referencing a shared project containing image assets in an asset catalog fail to load on windows.
• Image not populating on iOS splashscreen in VS 15.8.6.
• Possible bad codegen on union/bitfield assignment in VS2017 15.8.
• Fix C# UWP Store 1201 Submission Issue.
• Fix C# UWP package creation error APPX1101: Payload contains two or more files with the same destination path 'System.Runtime.CompilerServices.Unsafe.dll'.
• Error MT2002: Failed to resolve 'System.Runtime.CompilerServices.AsyncValueTaskMethodBuilder' reference from 'System.Threading.Tasks.Extensions...'" when building a Xamarin.iOS project.
• Redirecting to a relative url doesn't work when using AndroidClientHandler.
• Debug information for typedefs of unnamed enums compiled with the C compiler is now restored.
• The spectre-mitigated x86 version of delayimp.lib is now built with /Qspectre mitigations enabled.
• Changes were made to how Asset Catalogs in Xamarin.iOS projects are loaded in order to reduce solution load time.
• We have updated Xamarin.Forms templates to use the latest version.
• We have fixed an issue with ASP.NET Core Web Applications being debugged through Kestrel that would show the error message "Unable to configure HTTPS endpoint. No server certificate was specified...".
• Enabling the AppInsights site extension in App Service from Visual Studio now happens through the use of specific Application Settings.

Security Advisory Notices

• An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists when the Diagnostics Hub Standard Collector Service improperly handles certain file operations. 

One of the major new capabilities for developers in Windows 10 version 1511 is the final release of Windows.UI.Composition. This was in preview in the 10240 SDK but has now reached full release in this new update. 

The latest version of the NetBeans IDE features a range of new tools for HTML5/JavaScript and supports mixed Java/C++ development. It is now available for download in beta.

There is now a minimal version of VS Code that can run in a browser that is available for development and testing.  

Internet Information Services (IIS) 10.0 Express is a free, simple and self-contained version of IIS that is optimized for developers. IIS 10.0 Express makes it easy to use the most current version of IIS to develop and test websites. IIS 10.0 Express has all the core capabilities of IIS 10.0 and additional features to ease website development.

The benefits of using IIS 10.0 Express include:

• The same web server that runs on your production server is now available on your development computer.
• Most tasks can be done without the need for administrative privileges.
• IIS Express runs on Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and all later versions of Windows.
• Many users can work independently on the same computer. 

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced their support for Blazor, and now Frank A. Krueger has developed the Ooui library which allows C# or F# to be used to write applications that run in the browser.  Ooui can target WASM, enabling Xamarin.Forms app to be deployed in web assembly and the result runs entirely in-browser without the need for an application server.