My Favorite Visual Studio Extensions

November 30, 2015      .net Programming

Now that I have used Visual Studio 2015 for a couple of months, I have found that there are a few extensions that I just cannot live without. Best of all, these extensions are free!

Web Essentials 2015

Since most of my project involve web programming, I find this extension invaluable, especially for CSS editing. The features I like most are its ability to enter all vendor-specific CSS properties, syntax-check CSS for best practices, and minify CSS. I know there's a lot more it can do, but those are the features I use almost every day.

Visual Studio Spell Checker

I like to think I can type well, but in reality, I can type CODE well. When it comes to human words my fingers stumble - a lot. That's why I cannot live without this extension as it checks strings, comments and other areas it deems "non-code" for spelling errors much like Microsoft Word does while you're typing. You can add words to the dictionary and apply basic rules to tune it to your liking as well.

Productivity Power Tools

This extension, published by Microsoft, is full of useful features that, in my opinion, should be baked right into the IDE. Regardless, the features I like best are the mixed tabs and spaces checker as I am a stickler for tabs-only editing and the solution-level coloring of files and projects that have errors and warnings.