• Board Manager - Tested installing and building 400+ boards.
  
• Fix - Prevent board manager tool chains from overriding the arduino.cc original. It was possible that a working build system would break after installing board manager packages that use the same tool versions as the currently installed arduino package. This could be a serious issue for some users by causing the build system to appear unstable.
  
• More resilient and more intelligent  tools discovery for all 3rd part boards. Especially avr boards.
  
• IoT device discovery failed if mdns properties were not available. For example connecting an esp8266 without using ArduinoOTA would fail to automatically discover the device. (applies only to apple bonjour for windows users)
  
• Removed invalid #prama warnings from arduino 1.0.x debug builds. Did not cause a build to fail.
  
• Added new build property {deploy.transport_type} to distinguish between normal and programmer upload types.   deploy.transport_type=upload and  deploy.transport_type=program (gdb debug forum)
  
• Downloadable packages that contain platforms using the same named tool but of different versions could cause the wrong tool path to be available. This issue surfaced for the Intel Galileo gen2 boards that use a tool called sketchupload.exe. The intel package also contains the Genuino 101 definition which uses a different version of sketchupload.exe. Gal Gen2 boards would show {runtime.tools.sketchuploade...r} error when upload was attempted.
  
• Assembly view - Added support for the latest "Teensy" style compiler path definitions (used to find -objdupmp.exe)
  
• Added a new tools>options>visual micro>compiler property. "Disassembled View Auto Activate". If disassembled view has been enabled for a project then automatically display it after each successful build (defaults to OFF/false). tip: The view automatically converts temp build locations to correct source locations (dbl click to go to source).
  
• Discover downloaded tools that exist on disk but that have not been registered in a package index.json. (example: Samsung Artik 10 linuxuploader.exe)
  
• Use PnP serial device discovery instead of win32. This allows for more port properties to be discovered from WMI. The VId, PID and iSerial variables are now correctly populated. Build/upload properties include the {serial.port.iserial} which contains the unique serial device id and is used by boards such as Samsung Artik 10 during upload.
  
• Project name showed as "Sketch". After creating a new project using "File>New Arduino Project", the project name would revert to "Sketch" when it was next opened. This was caused by users clicking "No" to the visual studio prompt "save changes to the project (vcxfilters)". This release of Visual micro forces projects to be saved immediately after creation.
  
• Fix: "Key already in dictionary" error during load of hardware that contains key/values for properties that are normally set by the IDE at run time. Caused some hardware to be excluded from the available/installed boards list
  
• Improved threading and status bar animation
  
• Improved status messages during Esp8266 SPIFFS upload "vMicro>Upload Server Data Files"
  
• Append Vid/Pid specific build properties for the currently selected serial port (does not apply to Net/WiFi/OTA uploads).
  
• Show USB/Serial discovery properties in outputs when "Show Build Properties" is enabled. Properties are shown as Serial.[propName]=[value]
  
• Nucleo Fxx type boards using the mass storage upload method incorrectly define the disk volume in the upload command with quotes. For example "tools.nucleoFlasher.upload.pattern=-O "{node}" produces an invalid volume name of "NODE_F103RB". Visual Micro strips the quotes so that mass storage upload completes successfully.
  
• Allow Visual Micro to be used while board manager is downloading/installing packages. Currently, only one package can be downloaded at a time (more board manager improvements coming soon).
  
• Usb debug support for ARM_CORTEXA
  
• Usb debug support for STM32L4
  
• Implement better resolution of tool chain locations for hardware that inherits tools from other packages (boards that were designed for older gcc tool chains (but that inherit the core from packages such as arduino) will now use the version of tools (such as avrdude) that matches the core.
  
• Resolve the correct variants location for downloaded packages that use arduino ide\hardware variants. Caused certain boards such as "arcode" avr boards to fail to compile due a missing pins_arduino.h
  
• Fix: Platforms with index.json without dependencies now resolve to the latest arduino gcc. (attiny and other platforms would fail to compile)
  
• Network Esp8266 spiffs failed if authentication was not used unless an empty network.password= was provided via board.txt (tip: spiffs is the upload of files from the "project\data" folder to the esp8266 file system)
  
• Intellisense improvements for the latest arduino samd tool chain.
  
• Board Manager - Download and install multiple packages at the same time
  
• Board Mnanager - Allow project edit and upload during while new hardware is being downloaded and installed
  
• Board Manager - New hardware installation progress "Number of packages remaining"
  
• Arduino 1.6 and above only: -The default working directory when running build and upload processes has been changed from the arduinoide folder to arduinoide\java\bin. This enables .bat files that use java (such as some variations of serialuploader.bat and mapleuploader.bat stm32 and maple) to run without error.
  
• Board Manager - Improved installation of new package url index files via the 3rd party Board "Auto Discovery List". Instant download of new index.json files when clicking auto discovery nodes. Select as many as you want and then click the Re-scan button to view install-able platforms (will appear as in the available platforms list)