Need compiler help? Bing in Visual Studio brings what you need in just one click

The search engine can be a developer’s best friend. But going between IDE and the browser is a hassle. Every time you are stuck in tricky compiler errors, you have to modify your search string, copy and paste all the relevant error information, and try multiple searches to find the right solution. In Visual Studio 2015, we’re making it faster and easier for you to get the help you need.

Bing-powered compiler help is now integrated by default with VS 2015. Now, with just one click from the compiler error code, we’ll open Bing automatically and search the web using contextual information from your development environment such as the project type, error message and code, etc.

For instance, imagine you’re in Visual Studio and get a compiler error like the one below.

Clicking once on the link will open a Bing page with everything you need about the compiler error: the error code, message and contextual information of your development environment.

That feature is powered by an intelligent service from Bing which fetches web results using a combination of multiple contextual elements from your development environment and then gives the best ranked results for your compiler error. You can also modify the query right there in the search box and further narrow down the results.  

We at Bing and Visual Studio are developers too, and we want to save developers’ time as much as possible. We have a vision to enhance developer productivity in development lifecycle and we believe a search engine should adapt to how developers work to make things faster.

We’re always eager for your feedback. Reach us at bingdevassistant@microsoft.com.

- The Bing and Visual Studio teams