Today is the official launch of Visual Studio 2012 so I thought I’d share some of the extensions I’ve been leaning on for the last few months.
Visual Studio 2012 is a great step forward all by lonesome. The in-the-box enhancements below have been great as our teams and I adopted Visual Studio 2012:
- Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Project compatibility
- Extensible Test Explorer with Continuous Testing
- Asynchronous Solution Loading
- File Preview tab a-la Sublime
- Quick Launch
- Code Clone – Code Duplication Detection
- Seriously enhanced Diff tool
Great stuff, but there are some Extensions that I just can’t live without. Here are some of my favorites:
Test your javascript along side C# and other code using Jasmine or QUnit with the new Test Explorer. Continuously test your javascript and, now, coffeescript! Find out how here. Mathew Manela is a stud. Thank him for this one.
Run xUnit tests alongside other test frameworks without feeling the need to go ‘all-in’ on any one framework.
Specflow allows you to create and run BDD style tests right inside Visual Studio. If you’d like a demonstration of how we use Specflow to enable fast feedback and frequent releases, contact me for a lunch and learn.
This extension is so chock full of goodness I couldn’t begin to list the features. If you’re doing any kind web dev in Visual Studio, you need this extension. It adds coffeescript, LESS, Handlebars, and Mustache support. Allows you to embedded resources, IE hacks, and vendor specific prefixes. Stop wasting your time and just get it.
Shameless plug for my extension that allows you to publish code snippets to http://gist.github.com. This goes along with PsGist which lets you do the same from Powershell.
You might scoff at this one, but I’m a giant fan of VsVim. Learning Vim exponentially improved my productivity and I’ve been able to integrate that into my Visual Studio use thanks to Jared Parsons. You rock man! Thanks.
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