Microsoft has released the second beta of Node.js Tools for Visual Studio 1.0, making it available for download.

Node.js Tools for Visual Studio (NTVS) is a free add-on for Visual Studio that (as the name suggests) lets you work with Node.js apps in Visual Studio, so making use of features such as IntelliSense and the Visual Studio debugger. It also lets you run Node.js apps on Microsoft Azure Web Sites or Cloud Services. The plug-in comes with a graphical interface for Node's NPM package manager, so you can download Node libraries from the NPM repository from within Visual Studio.

(click to enlarge)

The updated beta has a new IntelliSense engine that can be used on larger code bases. It also caches the results of an analysis and reuses it in subsequent sessions to provide a better performance. The engine has new features including find all references, goto definition and IntelliSense in the REPL window. On the negative side, some features such as brace completion and outlining have been dropped from this beta, but should be back in Beta 3.

The NPM user interface has also been improved so it’s easier to use. The developers have also added integrated support for invoking NPM inside of the REPL window with a new .npm command.

Unit support has been expanded so you can make use of tests written with the Mocha JavaScript test framework. It’s also now possible to add support for your own unit test frameworks by writing a single Node module which finds and runs the tests.

There’s a long list of bug and ‘issues’ fixes. Code formatting has been re-written for improved performance, the debugger has benefitted from various fixes, and the project load time has been improved.

The new beta is available for download on CodePlex