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Azure and Visual Studio: Changes to the Server Explorer appearance

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Overview

As long term users of Visual Studio one learns that the documentation doesn’t always match the appearance of the Visual Studio IDE, and the components in the Visual Studio IDE.  But sometimes it can be confusing.

To see how the server explorer has changed see the link: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/app-service-changes-existing-services/, that article explains the changes.  They make sense, Web Apps are part of the App Services.  Just note that the VS 2015 has not made the changes as of the date of this writing.

Note this is not a real technical blog entry, it is just something I noticed that might help you out if you are new to Azure and learning from the articles as well from the MVAs on Azure.

Take a look at https://bit.ly/azurestoragedata . But even that excellent video may be mildly confusing as the Server Explorer in VS 2013 has changed slightly.

For instance, the Azure representation for Web Sites changed to Web Apps and then the Web Apps then merged into the App Services.  This is normal and one needs to adapt, see the article above. 

Or better, just go to the MVA: https://bit.ly/azurestoragedata and things will become clearer, but some things in the IDE will vary.  This is normal for most IDEs that have a dynamic community.

Currently

Currently Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate Server Explorer currently looks like this, and as you can see the Web Apps can be found under App Service:

image

Previous Appearance

You may see some articles written using the following image, apologies for the blurry image, but if you look carefully you will see that Web Sites is shown at the bottom.  In the current version, the Web Sites have been changed to Web Apps and appear under the App Service.  They work the same way.

Future Appearance in VS 2015

In VS 2015, the server explorer will change it’s appearance again.  Which makes writing paper books difficult for sure, and it will look like the following, and likely will change going forward. 

Server Explorer 2015

Conclusion

Well, it’s a changing world and one of the things we need to keep up with are changes and how they impact articles even published just a few weeks ago.  If you are trying to get up to speed with Azure, these changes can be confusing.

I hope this helps out as you try to navigate to a successful business in the cloud!