Visual Studio Addins

1. GhostDoc

This is a free addin that automatically generates the XML comments for your code. Click on the method/field name and press Control + Shift + D and it generates the XML comments for you.

GhostDoc provides two commands.

a. Build Documentation

b. Re-build Documentation

I usually set default keyboard shortcut Control + Shift + D to Re-build Documentation as it helps me in re-writing the documentation whenever I change signature of the method, or rename the parameters.

2. PowerCommands for Visual Studio

This is available from Microsoft itself and it is open source!. I am listing down few of its features below.

• Collapse projects
• Unload/Reload projects
• Remove and sort usings
• Open containing folder
• Open command prompt
• Extract constant
• Clear recent lists
• and more…

3. DPack

This has awesome set of features but I feel it has not got the popularity it deserves. This is the first thing which I install after installing Visual Studio.

From the developer site:

DPack includes various browser tools that allow the developer to quickly find solution files, types, particular type members, methods or properties for instance, or quickly find and reference standard .NET framework types.

I use its “File Browser” window a lot to quickly open the files in the solution. Similarly you can browse through the members/ types in the whole solution using “Solution Browser”. And “Framework Browser” window allows you to locate a type, its corresponding namespace and assembly.

6. Favoroites Menu for Visual Studio

This is the tool I developed long back. This tool provides you the same functionality of any browser favorites menu. To be more clear, this tool allows you to mark any files in Visual Studio as your favorite file. The tool allows you to tag the file for easy searching. You can read more details about this tool in my website under “My Development” section.

7. Source Code Outliner PowerToy

From the author:

The Source Outliner PowerToy is a Visual Studio 2008 extension that provides a tree view of your source code’s types and members and lets you quickly navigate to them with filtering inside the editor.

Developer Tools

1. Console2

A multi-tab based console window. I regularly use this and add VS 2005, VS 2008 and sometimes PowerShell console windows. Some of the special features include multiple tabs, text editor-like text selection, different background types, alpha and color-key transparency, configurable font, different window styles.

2. BareTail

A tiny free real-time log viewer and log message highlighter.

3. Process Monitor

Popular sysinternals tool. While developing the Visual Studio add-ins, I need to watch Visual Studio activity to identify whether my add-in dll is being loaded etc. For this, I usually filter the processes for devenv.exe.

From the author:

Process Monitor is an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity

4. Reflector

Needs no explanation!

System Tools

1. XNeat Windows Manager Lite edition

Tool to hide, roll up windows, change order of task bar buttons etc.

2. Everything

A tiny, super fast indexed search engine for searching files and folders.

3. Launchy

One of the popular launchers.

4. Dexpot

A free virtual desktop creation and management tool.

5. TeraCopy

A super fast copier with features to pause, resume file transfers. I have replaced the default copy handler after I found this.

6. CCleaner

A popular system junk cleaner, registry cleaner, startup manager tool. Freeware.

8. CutePDF writer

A free PDF printer.

Text Editors

1. PSPad

A syntax highlighting text editor. This one is my favorite. I regularly use it for formatting the HTML. Also has downloadable scripts to beautify JS etc.

2. Notepad++

Another open source free text editor.

Messengers

1. Digsby

A multi protocol messenger. Support all major messengers like GTalk, MSN, Yahoo, AIM etc. It can also alert you if you have any new messages in facebook, linked in etc. There is real competition between Pidgin and Digsby. I use Digsby mainly for its social networking capabilities.

Utilities

1. PrintScreen

A free screenshot taking tool.

2. ColorPix

A small free color picker. Once you found the color of your choice, press Space key will lock the color so that you can use it.

Zip Utilities

1. 7-Zip

A file archiver supporting all major compression algorithms.