Powertoys WebLog : _Add-Ins for VS

Free Wizard to Create C# Typed Collections in VS 2003

Powertoys — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 19:25:32 GMT

Via the mailbag… We used something similar to this tool when making our automation libraries for Whidbey. It comes in handy when you work with lots of collections.

Page: http://www.geekproject.com/tools.aspx#9

Description

This is a wizard for C# in Visual Studio .NET 2003 which creates custom typed collections. The wizard will generate code for the collection with options to have a an enumerator nested or not and possibility to have custom validation code.

CR_Documentor - Another Code Documentation Utility

Powertoys — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 08:00:00 GMT

Via Paraesthesia

Lutz Roeder, a fantastic developer of ultra-helpful tools, took his "Documentor" application - which allowed a developer to preview what XML document comments would look like rendered into end-user documentation - down from his site. He was nice enough to send me the source for it, though, so I've converted it into a Visual Studio tool window add-in via the rich plug-in framework offered by the Developer Express, Inc. package, DXCore (which also supports CodeRush for Visual Studio .NET).

This plug-in allows you to see a preview of your XML document comments - a la Roeder's original Documentor - real-time, as you edit the comments in Visual Studio.

.....

Installation is as easy as copying a DLL into a folder. The included readme.txt outlines installation, usage, and workarounds for known issues.

Requires DXCore 1.1.40 or later (DXCore is a FREE download from Developer Express - go get it!).

Download CR_Documentor 1.6.0.0909

But doesn't good code really speak for itself??? :-)

Josh

QuickdocViewer Add-In for XML Comment Viewing

Powertoys — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 03:44:00 GMT

Via the mailbag I discovered a tool that's pretty complimentary to the VBCommenter. The Quickdoc Viewer is an add-in module for the Microsoft Visual Studio.net IDE which offers a simple WYSIWYG XML to HTML previewer for XML based documentation comments. According to the author the main motivation for this Visual Studio.net add-in is, to be able to quickly preview XML documentation comments from inside of the IDE. But pictures speak louder than words. If you are using VS 2003 and like using XML comment documentation then this could be for you. Check out the shots to get a better idea.

More Info and Download:

http://www.kyrsoft.com/opentools/qdocviewer.html

VS Content Installer Power Toys

Powertoys — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 20:25:00 GMT

Via Craig

The first release of the VS Content Installer Power Toys are now available. You will need a recent build of VS (I tested with the August CTP, but the July version may also work) to use these tools. Remember, they are still a beta build, so not everything will work as expected. But here is what is available:

Content Builder - easily create VSI files with an easy to user wizard interface
Content Uninstaller - remove content installed through the Content Installer
Code Library Installer - install libraries for use within the Add Reference dialog box
Debugger Visualizer Installer - install debugger visualizers (both in DLL and CS form)
Help Installer - install help topics which are automatically included into the MSDN help browser
Samples Installer - install samples
Snippet Directory Installer - an extension of the the snippets installer, but gives you a bit more control in how the files are installed

The content installer also has 4 starter kits (2 for C#, 2 for VB) to help you create your own custom installers. There is also a starter kit (in C#) that will help create plugins into the content builder to automatically upload content to content hosting web sites. Unfortunately, there are no content hosting web sites that support automatic upload yet, but I am working on that - I am currently working on a starter kit to create web sites that host VSI content, just run the starter kit template and you have a full web site that supports uploading, downloading, content rating, etc. More information on this in the next few weeks.

This MSI will also place IntelliSense XML files for programming the Content Installer, unfortunately, because of a recent change in VS, this may not work as it should. But you should be able to move the xml file yourself to the correct location.

I plan on making the source code available to these tools soon.

You can download the msi to install the power toys at http://www.gotdotnet.com/workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=6b1aceda-e613-4dac-beeb-0cd8ad8f2d41

DPack 2.2.0 - Global Bookmarks, Improved Code Browsing, Code Stats, etc

Powertoys — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 19:29:00 GMT

Via TECHQUICK

My buddy Sergey has released a new update to DPack.

Here’s what’s new and changed in this release:

Added global bookmarks option to Numbered Bookmarks feature. Global bookmarks work on the whole solution as oppose to individual files, and allow one to quickly navigate from file to file.
Updated bookmarks icons to make it easier identify bookmark numbers.
Modified Code Browser to no longer treat code model related errors as fatal ones. Previously Code Browser would close its dialog if it failed to retrieve file’s code model. Now it would display an error in the dialog’s status bar and empty members list without actually closing the dialog. This should allow one to bypass the troublesome file and move onto another file.
Added “Properties Only” menu item to Code Browser’s Tools main menu. New command is accessible via Shift-Alt-P keyboard shortcut.
Various Code Browser usability improvements.
Added “Files to ignore” configuration option for Solution Backup feature.
Assigned “Ctrl-K, ?” shortcuts to all Surround With commands.

It also comes with July VS 2005 CTP support!

CodeXchange Snippet Sharing Community for Visual Studio

Powertoys — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 17:47:00 GMT

I really believe good rich client interfaces to online communities are going to be big. Why should you have to leave Visual Studio to share code with other developers? Why should you have to browse to a web page just to download a code snippet.

There have been a couple of these add-in/site combinations in the past, but so far I like what I see with www.codexchange.net and its package add-in for VS. The community on the site is small today, but should grow over time. I'm looking forward to seeing them work well with VS 2005 and the actual snippet format we use to make things even easier.

From the Site:

In short , CodeXchange is an Visual Studio.NET add-in and a standalone application providing you with instant integrated access to an online repository of ready to use .NET code snippets.

The CodeXchange addin is a dockable toolwindow inside the Visual Studio.NET IDE, allowing you to integrate it with your standard development environment layout.

Josh

Happy Birthday to our Friends @ SharpToolbox

Powertoys — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 00:36:00 GMT

Fabrice has been aggregating all sorts of Developer productivity enhancing tools for just over two years now and I wanted to say thanks for all the hard work and Happy Birthday!

Via Fabrice: SharpToolbox is two years old

Two years ago, I started collecting development tools for .NET on this weblog. This list quickly became a web site: SharpToolbox.com.
Two years after, it references 680 tools including 186 libraries in 49 categories. To date, 33 tools have been flagged as discontinued.
I believe SharpToolbox is a comprehensive directory of the available tools for .NET. Let's hope its sister site, JavaToolbox, will have the same future.

- Josh

Go Back Visual Studio Add-in

Powertoys — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 19:20:00 GMT

http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/GoBackAddin.asp

[Via .Avery Blog]

The Go Back Add-in provides a Navigate Backward functionality that is different than the normal Navigate Backward functionality. (Which does some neat things like close a file if you happened to have opened it while navigating forward) The author of the tool is pretty passionate about what he wants and built the exact functionality he was looking for, if you agree with what he likes then you should love it.

(via The Daily Grind)

-James

This is a pretty cool extension to the Navigate backwards command in VS. Oh, if you like that command in general then you might also want to check out the VSMouseBindings powertoy that will let you bind the navigate back/forward commands to your extra mouse keys. Josh

VBCommenter 1.2.5 FINAL Released for Adding XML Comments to VB.Net

Powertoys — Sun, 20 Mar 2005 01:08:00 GMT

I continue to be impressed by the people from the community that step up and make serious improvements to the VBCommenter tool. The new release, from Doug, is very impressive. Here are just some of the improvements he highlighted on his blog.

Major speed improvements (mostly related to schema and XML validation handling). For example, a large project that took 14 minutes to build using 1.2 and 2 minutes without VBCommenter takes about 2.5 minutes with 1.2.5.
Improved comment schema (includes all NDoc extensions to the XML comment schema)
Improved XML validation and task list reporting
cref resolution is much better - If your class has a method called "Log" and you want to reference it, the generated cref will be correct instead of pointing to System.Diagnostics.Log
Reads assemblies in read-only mode to avoid locking the file or the inability to load the assembly if the IDE has it locked
Renders variables declared as "WithEvents" as properties (which is how the WithEvents keyword is implemented in IL) to allow NDoc to find the appropriate comments for the field (See More)

Josh

Read Blogs Without Leaving Visual Studio

Powertoys — Sat, 19 Mar 2005 23:35:00 GMT

Jon, the creator of SharpTools, sent me mail to let me know about his latest creation... a plugin that lets you read blogs indide the Visual Studio IDE. I've gave it a shot and I have to say that it looks pretty cool.

From the site.

This open source plugin ships as part of SharpTools 2.0 and is a full-featured RSS / Blog aggregator which integrates into the familiar dockable panes of the Visual Studio.NET IDE. You're gonna love it when you start blogging from within the development environment! Features include:

Support for folders or individual feeds
Drag-and-drop support for feeds and folders
Preview a new feed as you add it
Easy control of all feed properties
Automatic and on-demand refresh of feeds
Automatic feed search based on a site URL
Keyword searching for published feedsusing Synic8
Keyword search within all subscribed feeds
Import of feed subscriptions from an OPML file

VS Editor Font Zooming like Word

Powertoys — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 23:49:00 GMT

Via http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford/archive/2005/02/14/372645.aspx

"A very big thank you to Henrik Stuart for writing this VS Editor Zoom control and updating it for Whidbey. "

"Just like Word’s zoom control, adjusting the value of this control will increase or decrease the font size in the Visual Studio Editor "

Josh

Automatic Build Dependencies (ABD) add-in for VC project in .Net 2003

Powertoys — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 23:39:00 GMT

Another mailbag entry from Lionel.

"I just put together an add-in for visual studio 2003 that sets automatically build dependencies for all VC projects in the current solution. It also has the option to generate Build Dependencies Graphs. "

http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/AutoBuildDependencies.asp

Codehound - Developer Search Engine with VS Add-In

Powertoys — Sat, 12 Feb 2005 00:13:00 GMT

Via jtobler "Another great source-code finding search engine is Codehound. For DotNetters, Codehound also offers a nifty free code-finding VisualStudio.NET Add-in."

Check it out @ http://www.codehound.com/

The addin simply lets you search for the selected text in the editor by opening a web browser to the codehound search results. Josh

"Hello Computer"; A Visual Studio add-in for Programming by Voice

Powertoys — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:45:00 GMT

Not sure how useful this is in practice. I have a hard enough time getting voice recognition to work in normal applications let alone using it to write code in Visual Studio, but who could resist giving this experimental add-in a try. Personally I'd prefer a way to hook up voice to Visual Studio commands. But I can't imagine that is far off.

Josh

Via Scott Weinsteen

"For some of us coders who suffer from RSI, programming by voice is something of a holy grail. There are a fair number of false starts, and aborted attempts. It's a hard problem, the people who are most likely to want it, and be willing to work on a solution, are the same people who are unable to do so.

Here's my contribution, IdentifierCache, an experimental add-in for Visual Studio.Net to provide an identifier cache, based on the idea of the Emacs module cache-pad."

Project Home: http://speech.squidnet.com/default.aspx/SpeechRecognition.IdentifierCache

"An experimental add-in for Visual Studio.Net to provide an identifier cache, based on the idea of the Emacs module cache-pad "

BuildOne to Make Builds More Efficient

Powertoys — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 20:40:00 GMT

Just got mail about this add-in. Looks like a good time saver if you work with large multi-project solutions that reference each other.

"While developing a large product with VS .NET, I couldn't help but notice that as the Solution larger and larger, my compile time eventually reached 3 minutes (Yikes). Yes, I could customize the Active Configuration and only build the assemblies that I know I have changed. Instead, I developed an Add-in for VS .NET that decides and builds only the assemlies that are required for the changes I have made. It also auto-saves the files that are dirty. If your interested, here is the link: "

http://www.geerbuilt.biz/comersus/store/productView.aspx?idProduct=2