For my money, there is no better IDE to develop in than Visual Studio and the newest 2010 version is no exception. Granted I’ve been using the software for almost a decade in both my home and office work so I know how to use it well but for me, there are so many powerful tools that just aren’t there in other IDEs it’d be such a pain to switch.
About six months ago, my department migrated from Visual SourceSafe for our version control to Team Foundation Server. Soon afterwards I did a search for any TFS plug-ins that would build upon the already impressive set of features offered by the software. I did find a power tools plug-in but more importantly during my search I also came across the Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Power Tools plug-in. If you’re a VS user and you do not have this plug-in already, you’re really missing out. Just read some of the features this plug-in gives you for free!
- Ctrl + left-click on any method or variable and you’ll automatically jump to its definition.
- Hover over a method and it’ll bring up a window where you can quickly find references to the method, a list of caller methods and a list of methods the hovered method calls.
- A new “solution navigator” gives you a window similar to the “solution explorer” but you’re able to expand files in the tree to reveal any classes contained within that file which can then expand to reveal their methods.
- The navigator also gives you a quick search function so you can easily find files, methods or variables that contain certain text you search for.
Honestly, I could keep going on and on listing features this plug-in adds. But instead of wasting your and my time, just install the power tools and give them a try. You should find that once you add this to your Visual Studio 2010 installation, your productivity will shoot up a couple of notches.