The latest release of CodeStream, for both Visual Studio and VS Code, introduces some big changes to the CodeStream interface, and some awesome new features!

A simple, yet powerful, new codemarks view

If you’ve ever commented on a Google Doc you’ll be familiar with how comments are displayed along the right side of the document and aligned with the text you’ve commented on. This model for visualizing comments makes so much sense to us that we decided to bring that experience to CodeStream.

Open a source file that contains codemarks and the power of working from an annotated codebase becomes clear. Your team’s comments, questions and issues are easily discoverable right alongside the code blocks they refer to.

The new inline view also makes it even easier to create a codemark. Have a question about a line of code? Hover over the CodeStream pane just to the right of that line of code and then click on the icon to add a comment. Or simply select the code, and the icons will appear to the right at the end of your selection.

Whether it’s a comment, question, request, bug, or bookmark, the new inline view makes it very clear that codemarks are living links between all the information behind your code and the code itself. While we are just getting started on this new view and have lots of ideas on how to expand and improve it, we'd really love to hear from you. Share your feedback @teamcodestream (or report bugs on our GitHub).

Permalinks

Permalinks give you even more options for sharing a block of code outside of your editor. Say you want to add a reference to a block of code to an existing Jira ticket, pull request or Slack thread? Just highlight a block of code and click the permalink icon.

Permalinks can be either private, which means people will have to sign in to CodeStream in order to view them, or public (i.e., no authentication required).

Simply click the Create Link button to get the URL that you can share however you see fit. Clicking on the link will take you to a web-based view of the codemark and, if applicable, a button to view the code on your code-hosting provider (e.g., GitHub, GitLab, etc.).

Again, while we have big plans for the future of this feature (e.g. jumping from the web, directly into your IDE is coming soon™), we'd really love hear about all the creative ways your teams leverage permalinks and how we can make them more awesome.

Finally! Shortcuts for creating codemarks

We love shortcuts. CodeStream now has a set of keyboard shortcuts to easily create codemarks without taking your hands away from the keyboard!

Codemark TypeWindows/LinuxmacOSComment

ctrl+shift+/, ctrl+shift+/

ctrl+shift+/, c

ctrl+/, ctrl+/

ctrl+/, c

Issuectrl+shift+/, ictrl+/, iBookmarkctrl+shift+/, bctrl+/, bPermalinkctrl+shift+/, pctrl+/, pCopy Permalink to Clipboardctrl+shift+/, shift+pctrl+/, shift+p