MSDN Magazine - October 2008 - (Page 62) VENDOR-SPONSORED CONTENT Top 10 Free Extensions on the Visual Studio Gallery Mike Yeager, EPS Software U nlike my wife, with few exceptions I don’t like to shop. Today I broke my routine and went to the Visual Studio Gallery, sorted the list of extensions by cost and went shopping for cool FREE stuff. Here’s a list of my top 10 faves. Some of them are tools I’d already been using and can’t live without and some are bargains I just came across. I can’t wait to tell my wife how much money I’ve saved her! It’s good to finally return the favor. 10. MeneesVSTools MeneesVSTools adds new features to the text editor in Visual Studio, including sorting, trimming, reporting metrics and spell checking. There are also some handy features like the ability to generate and insert a GUID on the fly which I use a lot in writing tests. It also does in-context base conversions between hex, decimal and binary. 6. Source Code Outliner PowerToy One of the things I missed in Visual Studio (until today!) is having a hierarchical navigation system when I’m editing large source files.While Visual Studio does give us a drop-down list of types and members, it doesn’t remain visible and accessible. In addition, this extension filters the list to help you locate that member you “almost” remember the name of. 9. RIAnimation RIAnimation from HushHushMedia is a cool alternative to Flash for simple animations. It’s an ASP.NET control that applies Rich Interactive Animations using only JavaScript. Links on the Gallery web page take you to a live demonstration site where you can see RIAnimation in action. 5. F# F# is a functional programming language for the .NET Framework, which combines the succinct and compositional style of functional programming with the interoperability and object-oriented model of .NET.It supports a range of development styles, from lightweight scripting and explorative development, to large-scale component and application design. And it’s currently a freely available add-in for Visual Studio. 8. DB Connection Visualizer DB Connection Visualizer from Microsoft lets you run SQL statements and view the results in a grid from the Visual Studio 2005 debugger. 7. StickyNotes StickyNotes is a very cool, lightweight extension that lets you save notes for each file in a solution. 4. 32feet.NET 32feet.NET makes it easy to program for Bluetooth and Infrared (IrDA) and works on desktop, mobile and embedded systems.
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