Deborah's Developer MindScape

Visual Studio wants to keep you informed of important information, such as available Visual Studio updates, license expirations, or alerts.

Prior versions of Visual Studio provided the notifications in a pop-up balloon that appeared in your Windows task bar. In Visual Studio 2012, the pop-up balloon appears and disappears so quickly, it is easy to miss. And it is not obvious how to display it again.

In Visual Studio 2013, this process was improved by moving the notification into the Visual Studio title bar. That way you can review the notifications at any time.

Hover over the icon for a quick overview of the notifications. At this point, I have one new notification for a total of one notification.

Click the notification icon to display the Notification window.

The notification window contains messages and alerts. Currently, Visual Studio is letting me know that I have the option to join the Visual Studio Experience Improvement Program.

Many notifications provide a link to an action. Hover over the link to view the notification details.

Click the link to perform the action. For example, this link opens a dialog:

After you have viewed a notification, it is no longer considered new.

At any later time, you can click the Notification icon to open the Notification window and view your current notifications. Or you can open it from the menu using View | Notifications.

With this new notification feature, you can always be aware of messages, alerts, and updates.

Enjoy!

For more information on the new Visual Studio 2013 features, check out my upcoming Pluralsight course: Mastering Visual Studio 2013.