It’s been a busy past couple of weeks! We've rolled out some improvements worth noting to the Web app and App Service environment experiences in the Azure preview portal.

New create experience for Web apps

We streamlined the Web app create experience, making it both faster and much simpler. With this new experience creating a Web app is as simple as providing the name for it. App Service plan properties such as location and pricing tiers are logically grouped and surfaced where they matter. Relevant information that will help you pick the right App Service plan for your Web app such as location and instance count are now presented in context.

Web app resource blade improvements

We have made many improvements to the Web app resource blade in the following areas:

Web app blade performance

Most releases and updates include performance and reliability fixes that usually add up to a few fractions of seconds of improvement. However, over the last couple of weeks we've emphasized performance fixes for the Web app blade. In this particular update we are singling out performance because we have managed to shave full seconds from the experience. These improvements translate into snappier navigation, more reliable resource blade loading and a better overall experience. We've also improved telemetry in places that will allow us to identify and proactively fix new performance bottlenecks or regressions.

App Service Plan Lens

A lot of App Service plan concepts were surfaced on the Web app resource blade under the “Usage Lens,” this was causing some confusion. We renamed this lens in the Web app blade to be “App Service Plan” which better represents the information contained there. The App Service plan lens also includes a direct link to open the App Service plan blade.

New Tools menu

We added the tools menu to the action bar as a way to provide quick access to the tools provided. Many of the tools in this menu, like Troubleshoot and ARM Explorer, have been around for some time but were not easy to find.

New Java configuration options for Web apps

Java users will benefit from a new Java version selector that lets you configure the major and minor version as well as the container.

Updates for App Service Environment

The App Service Environment resource blade now has metrics graphs enabling you monitor utilization across your worker pools. We also now allow for creation of App Service Environments into smaller subnets (as small as 8 IP address or a /29 mask) as requested by many customers.