Third-Party Add-Ins

Ever since Microsoft provided outside parties the ability to create add-ins, thousands of third-party add-ins have been written and shared among developers. Many of the add-in modules are available for free or little cost. A good starting point is the Microsoft Visual Studio Gallery at http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/.

Microsoft add-ins

Microsoft developers have provided a number of add-ins to the gallery. A few sample add-in programs available include:

• Color Printing: Allows code files to be printed in color.
• Regex Editor: IntelliSense, syntax color, and testing regular expressions. If you work with regular expressions, this add-in is a great addition to the IDE.
• PowerCommands: Useful extensions to the Visual Studio IDE. Adds commands such as Undo close, Insert GUID, Extract Constant, etc. to the IDE.
• Productivity Power Tools: Developer productivity extensions.
• Enhancements to the IDE, such as organize Visual Basic imports (similar to organize Usings in C#), align assignment statements, customize document tabs, etc.

It is not unusual to see the functionality of add-in modules developed internally by Microsoft make it into future releases of Visual Studio.

Community add-ins

There is a large community of programmers who are writing and sharing their add-ins to the website. Some useful add-ins from the community includes:

Indent Guides

The Indent Guides add-in displays vertical lines to show indentation levels. It provides a useful visual guide for aligning statements.

19. Indent Guide Add-in

Routing Assistant

The Routing Assistant add-in enables users to browse, define, match, and filter ASP.NET MVC routes for ASP.NET applications and websites with ease, directly from within Visual Studio. With the popularity of the MVC framework, this add-in module is a great time-saver and way to understand MVC routing behavior.

devColor

The devColor add-in underlines the colors in style sheets and includes a color picker dialog.

20. devColor Add-in

The Visual Studio Gallery is a worthwhile site to visit and bookmark. You can also contribute your own add-ins if you create one that could be useful to other programmers.

Fame and glory await you!