Best VS2010 Extensions

Question

What are in your opinion the "must have" Visual Studio 2010 extensions?

OData Protocol Visualizer is fine

Solid Softfare Xplorer isn't free, but looks very nice

Just tried NuGet Tools and it's GREAT

I have added individual answers for the extensions that I use/like. May the best ones vote-float to the top! — el2iot2, Jul 12 '10 at 18:00
Same here. Having too many in a single answer messes up the rankings. — Jonathan Allen, Jul 12 '10 at 18:04
A lot of stuff isn't available in the Gallery, including must-have add-ons like Silverlight Tools. — Jonathan Allen, Jul 12 '10 at 18:12
Although not restricted to VS2010, this question has a nice list: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/106340/what-is-your-favorite-visual-studio-add-in-setting — cwap, Jul 26 '10 at 21:06
possible duplicate of [Visual Studio 2010 - recommended extensions ](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2757357/visual-studio-2010-recommended-extensions) — Brian, Jul 27 '10 at 03:12

score 15 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 15 '10 at 14:33

15

Resharper 5.0 is the one I must have. Some others are nice to have as well.

answered Apr 15 '10 at 14:33

Brendan Enrick

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I'm not ashamed to admit that I totally love Resharper – Phil Hale Jul 08 '11 at 12:51
+1 for ReSharper. It is out of this world. – IneedHelp Aug 01 '12 at 09:28

score 12 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 12 '10 at 18:14

12

I like the Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power Tools.

edited Jul 12 '10 at 18:14

Jonathan Allen

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answered Jun 17 '10 at 18:05

Adam Driscoll

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Agreed. A nice addition. – el2iot2 Jul 12 '10 at 17:59
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This adds a new Add References dialog that save an insane amount of time. – Jonathan Allen Jul 12 '10 at 18:15
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It will really be great the day they decide to stop overwriting all the configuration at each updates. – Julien Roncaglia Oct 21 '10 at 12:10

score 4 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:25

4

Mine are

PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2010 offer so much...
Triple Click - Select line with Triple Click
StructureAdornment - Show scope of code
Go To Definition And Them Editor - As mentioned by Noah

edited May 23 '17 at 12:25

Community

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answered Jun 17 '10 at 18:03

moi_meme

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+1 Structure Adornment, Power Commands – Maslow Sep 22 '11 at 20:19
StructureAdornment -> "This item is not yet published." – Kees C. Bakker Jan 06 '12 at 11:36

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 19 '10 at 00:52

Matt's Visual Studio Color Theme Editor is proving to be really popular (over 10,000 downloads as of 4/18/10).

I've written a couple that are popular; Go To Definition is one of the most popular. If you do a search for my name ("Noah Richards"), you'll find some of the others (triple click to select whole lines, italicize comments, spell checking for strings and comments, and about 7 others).

There's at least one other spell check extension on the gallery, the HTML Spell Checker. It's more mature than the one I wrote but requires Office to work.

+1 For Go To Definition and Theme Editor – moi_meme Jun 17 '10 at 17:57 — moi_meme, Jun 17 '10 at 17:57

score 2 · Answer 5 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:32

I have found the snippets to be useful for various tasks along the way, and so this is a good way to smooth out the maintenance of such snippets:

Snippet Designer

Description Adapted from the website:

A Snippet editor integrated inside of the IDE.
- Opening any .snippet file
- Uses the native Visual Studio code editor
- Mark replacements with a convenient right click menu.
- Snippet properties inside the Visual Studio properties window.
A Snippet Explorer tool
- A right Click "Export as Snippet" menu option added to C#, VB and XML code editor to send highlighted code directly to the Snippet Editor

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 12 '10 at 17:58

2

I love the Win7 Taskbar Extension, especiall when working with multiple solutions.

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/0c92dd87-50ac-489e-882b-b99de7624502

answered Jul 12 '10 at 17:58

Jonathan Allen

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score 2 · Answer 7 · answered Jul 12 '10 at 18:21

2

When using SVN

Visual SVN

saves a lot of time and it is very handy.

answered Jul 12 '10 at 18:21

HerrVoennchen

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I use this and agree...it is invaluable if you live in an SVN world and cannot escape. Alas, it is not free. – el2iot2 Jul 12 '10 at 18:36
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May not free but not very expensive. It's worth IMHO – HerrVoennchen Jul 13 '10 at 06:40
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I briefly tried this out, but actually found AnkhSVN better (and free, too). – stakx - no longer contributing Jul 26 '10 at 21:00

score 2 · Answer 8 · answered Jul 26 '10 at 20:55

2

Can I put a plug in for my own extension? :)

PowerGUI Visual Studio Extension - Add PowerShell support to VS2010

answered Jul 26 '10 at 20:55

Adam Driscoll

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score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Jan 09 '12 at 10:34

I use these extensions:

The first one has a lot of options, just enable the options you like. I liked the 'close selected tab' icon on the right corner in Visual studio 2008. You can enable that icon again with this extension. I also like the option to 'pin' tabs.

The autoscroller enables the scrolling in the main window, its also called 'middle-click scrolling'. I missed taht from VS 2008 as well.

el2iot2 · Answer 10 · 2010-07-12T18:34:15.987

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Update As pointed out below by Jonathan Allen, this functionality already exists in Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power Tools. Adding this extension, then, would be redundant if you already have that.

There are many ways to solve the posting of formatted code, but I liked the integrated nature of this extension and how you can tweak the resulting HTML:

Code4Blog

Description From Linked Page:

Code4Blog is a Visual Studio 2010 extension that allows to convert any code supported by Visual Studio IDE to HTML format with the same structure and colors. Main purpose of this extension is to prepare a code snippet to be published in rich documents, for example in blog posts, Microsoft Word documents or Help files. Some additional styling could be applied: max width and height of the code block, custom background (per code line), font family and font size, line numbering and others.

edited Jul 12 '10 at 18:34

answered Jul 12 '10 at 17:55

el2iot2

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Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power Tools does it in a better way. When you use the normal copy command it stores the code as both HTML and plain text in the copy buffer. Then when you hit paste the target application decides which it prefers. – Jonathan Allen Jul 12 '10 at 18:10
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Thanks Jonathan, I had missed that in the features, but it does work just as one would expect. Documentation also says that customization settings are pending...which would be great. – el2iot2 Jul 12 '10 at 18:28

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Jul 12 '10 at 17:58

0

Microsoft Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 is a must have for WPF developers.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=eff8a0da-0a4d-48e8-8366-6ddf2ecad801&displaylang=en

answered Jul 12 '10 at 17:58

Jonathan Allen

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score 0 · Answer 12 · answered Jul 12 '10 at 18:11

Refactor is a must-have for me. CodeRush is also nice, though one of these years I need to seriously compare it to Resharper. I think most people stick with whichever they first use, as they both take a lot of time to learn.

http://www.devexpress.com/Downloads/Visual_Studio_Add-in/

score 0 · Answer 13 · answered Oct 21 '10 at 13:52

I'm using Visual Nunit which is rather nice if you don't have the money to stump up for something like ReSharper. It's only feature (as far as I'm aware) is to allow running nunit tests from within the IDE, which is nice becuase it means you don't have to revert to Nunit GUI every time you want to run some of your unit tests. Also seems pretty stable as of version 1.1.7.

score 0 · Answer 14 · answered Jun 27 '11 at 03:25

I find the following useful

If you use TFS for ALM Management Search Work Items for TFS 2010

VS10x Code Map is great for visually navigating classes

SpecFlow for mapping User Stories/Features to automated tests in a way that is readable by steak holders or team members without coding knowledge (Behaviour Driven Development)

And a Spell Checker for strings/comments is always good

score 0 · Answer 15 · answered Dec 07 '11 at 20:02

I'm also going to plug my own extension - VSFileNav used for quickly finding a file in your solution using wildcards, camel case searches etc.

I developed it because there wasn't anything free (and good - SonicFileFinder was too slow) and used it many times every day.

Best VS2010 Extensions

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