The best extensions for Visual Studio 2012

Aug 22, 12 • In .NET

Visual Studio 2012 is absolutely the best IDE in the world and, with the latest version, it has sorted most of the big problems (from my point of view the previous version was a bit slow).

I’m not a big fan of extensions because they often make Visual Studio unstable and/or slow, but I’ll make an exception because it this case it’s incredibly cool!

Resharper 7

It doesn’t need presentation. It’s absolutely the best Add-On for Visual Studio (I use it probably from the first version);

Below a cool video by Hadi Hariri

More info: http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/
Download: http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/download/index.html
Cost: Free for opensource and MVP, 47€$ academic, 189€ Personal License, 332€ Commercial (+VAT for all licenses)

Vs Commands

Like Resharper I really love it because introduces some interesting features like Settings Synchronization (using DropBox, Skydrive or whatever you want). Moreover it highlights important messages in Output Windows (red for errors, yellow for warning, etc.), shows branch name into the solution, locate in solution and my favorite feature : Attacch To IIS Process.

If you need to debug your web application, a simple click on a button (or a shortcut if you prefer) and you got the IIS process attached into Visual Studio.

More info: http://vscommands.squaredinfinity.com/features
Download: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/a83505c6-77b3-44a6-b53b-73d77cba84c8
Cost: Free

StyleCop

It’s a incredible tool that improves your code quality. In fact, combined with R#, it analyzes C# source code to enforce a set of style and consistency rules (naming convention, code documentation, maintainability, spacing, etc.). If you don’t use R# you can use also StyleCop inside Visual Studio or jut at compile time with MsBuild.

More info: http://stylecop.codeplex.com/
Download: http://stylecop.codeplex.com/releases/view/79972
Cost: Free

Ghost Doc

It’s a cool extensions that helps you to document your methods starting from naming convention or copying from base method.
Unluckily there isn’t yet a stable version for VS2012 but I’m using the beta and it seems to work well.

More info: http://submain.com/products/ghostdoc.aspx
Download: http://submain.com/blog/GhostDocV4Beta2IsAvailable.aspx
Cost: Free for the basic version and from 25% to 50$ for the Pro

Image Optimizer

It’s a cool extension made by Mads Kristensen (http://madskristensen.net/) that optimizes your images directly inside Visual Studio. Right click on the folder or on the image and “Optimize Image”. You can see the compression result into the output window of Visual Studio.

More info and Download: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/a56eddd3-d79b-48ac-8c8f-2db06ade77c3
Cost: Free

SlowCheetah – XML Transforms

Is another interesting extension. It adds xml transformation for all xml files (not just for .config) and, only for the client application, applies the transformation directly when you push F5 from Visual Studio.

More info and Download: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/69023d00-a4f9-4a34-a6cd-7e854ba318b5/view/Discussions/1
Cost: Free

Web Essentials 2012

I’m not a web designer and I’m absolutely away to be a guru of CSS but that extension is really cool. Something I’ve to change a css color, class, or add a fallback for and old browser or a new no-standard feature (webkit, moz, prefixes for example).

Get Microsoft Silverlight

Get Microsoft Silverlight

More info and Download: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/07d54d12-7133-4e15-becb-6f451ea3bea6/
Cost: Free

Which is your favorite?

Related Posts

  • http://www.serversidedeveloper.com/ HJ Meulekamp

    vs2012 Resharper and webessentials.

    In vs2010 add nuget and productivity tools (ms) for just the tabs. In vs2012 they build those features into the product itself.. Lucky us ;-)

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  • tcmaster

    I would not recommend GhostDoc. It makes it too easy to pollute your code with garbage comments.

    • http://www.tostring.it/ Ugo Lattanzi

      That’s a good point!

    • Guru Meditation

      Comments doesn’t do *anything* to your code…

      • James Telfer

        It’s not about affecting the runtime behaviour of code. Obvious or generated comments decrease itself readability and thereby maintainability. If the comment text itself can be generated (not the comment structure) , it’s pointless.

        All comments should add to a reader’s understanding of the code.

  • Ewen Wallace

    If you’re looking for XML docs, try Atomineer. I document my code because I’m getting old and forget stuff. By default it collapses all the comments when you open a file so it’s not too much pollution.

    • Steven Bone

      I also like Atomineer. It supports many different styles of comments and always supported C++. The ability to configure documentation styles can be embedded on a per directory basis if desired, so that your entire team is using the same settings. I was a loyal GhostDoc user until I experienced Atomineer. The prices are pretty much in line with each other, Atomineer has a $10 fee for one version (with no updates or future discounts), or $40 for a year of updates. Each month, there is a new build with new capabilities, while GhostDoc has been fairly stagnant until this last version…

  • http://www.facebook.com/adriaan.davel.37 Adriaan Davel

    I can’t go without Spell Checker, but maybe thats just me, Noah Richards, http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/7c8341f1-ebac-40c8-92c2-476db8d523ce

    • http://www.tostring.it/ Ugo Lattanzi

      Installed. Let’s try!

  • Bostjan

    There is realy never too much coments beside code :)

    • Br.Bill

      I beg to differ:

      int refCount // define reference count with an integer

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  • justme

    I like CodeRush

  • http://www.tostring.it/ Ugo Lattanzi

    argh … I forgot to mention StyleCop (
    http://stylecop.codeplex.com/)… It is a good tool for code analysis and works well with Resharper (7 version included).
    I’m gonna to update the post, adding it!

  • http://www.facebook.com/soren.reinke Søren Reinke

    Cool list.

    Found a minor typing error:

    It’s a cool extension made by Mad Kristensen (http://madskristensen.net/)

    Hi firstname is ‘Mads’ not ‘Mad’ (which means food in danish, and he is danish) :-)

    • http://www.tostring.it/ Ugo Lattanzi

      Argh .. my fault.
      Fixed

      Thx

  • coder

    If you like GhostDoc you should try Atomineer (www.atomineerutils.com). It’s really well supported (it’s been stable for VS 2012 since the Beta), it’s got way more features, and makes a much better starting point for docs most of the time.

  • Alex Zakharenko

    I suggest to look at PVS-Studio. http://pvs-studio.viva64.com. It spots very common programming errors. While not being very cheap, you can use trial for unlimited time.

  • Schmulik Raskin

    Mindscape’s Web Workbench is very useful for Web developers working with CoffeeScript, LESS and/or Sass, is available for free and is actively being improved in each release. http://www.mindscapehq.com/products/web-workbench

  • Jason Morgan

    It’s quite hard to find a good site. And I think I am lucky
    enough to have come here. The posts are doing great and full of good insights.
    I would be glad to keep on coming back here to check for updates!

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    • http://www.tostring.it/ Ugo Lattanzi

      Hi Jason,
      thx for the kind words. It’s a busy period but I’ll back to write something :)

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