VS Code 1.40 closes 4,600 GitHub issues and adds new features

Microsoft have released the monthly VS Code update. Version 1.40 was built using TypeScript 3.7, which was released this week, and enables new language features like optional chaining. In order to use v3.7 features, you need the JavaScript and TypeScript Nightly extension, available in the Extension Marketplace.

SEE ALSO: TypeScript 3.7 adds long-awaited optional chaining feature

VS Code 1.40 is referred to as a “housekeeping iteration”, as the team focused on issues and pull requests on GitHub. Altogether, they closed 4,622 issues by either triaging or fixing them. Check out the interactive VS Code Issue Tracker by Benjamin Lannon to see how the journey has been going.

Now, let’s have a look at some of the highlights in VS Code 1.40.

Terminal updates

The terminal received some new features in this release, one of which is fast scroll support. Just hold Alt while scrolling with the mouse wheel. Scroll speed is defined in the editor.fastScrollSensitivity setting.

Changing the rightClickBehavior setting to "terminal.integrated.rightClickBehavior": "paste” will now allow you to paste in the terminal on right-click, while ,, :, and ; are now used as separator characters when double-clicking to select a word.

Additionally, the terminal now includes chord support by default and command navigation from the scroll position.

Workbench color theme updates

If you’re always having trouble getting your bearings, you will enjoy this new feature: VS Code 1.40 adds an indicator for the active item and changes the inactive foreground colors to create a stronger contrast. You can also opt to use a background color for the active element.

Take a look at the new indicator in this gif:

Source: Microsoft

And there’s more in terms of color changes. The VS Code window now allows you to add the window border colors window.activeBorder and window.inactiveBorder:

Source: Microsoft

Other updates and bug fixes

Debugging, Git support, source control and other aspects of VS Code have received updates as well, and three notable bugs have been fixed. Terminal content in powershell/conpty should not go missing anymore when resizing, Markdown preview should now support dragging to start a new editor group and the Webview editor should appear in Open Previous Editor from the History command.

SEE ALSO: TypeScript 3.7 adds long-awaited optional chaining feature

See the full release notes for more details on VS Code 1.40.