{"id":5331,"date":"2016-03-02T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-03-02T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/?p=5331"},"modified":"2019-10-24T17:39:05","modified_gmt":"2019-10-25T00:39:05","slug":"new-noteworthy-visual-studio-extensions-feburary-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/new-noteworthy-visual-studio-extensions-feburary-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"New and Noteworthy Visual Studio Extensions \u2013 Feburary 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last month <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/2016\/02\/11\/find-your-favorite-visual-studio-extension\/\">I showed you a few of my favorite Visual Studio extensions<\/a> that give great examples of how developers add new features to Visual Studio. With such a vibrant ecosystem around Visual Studio, new extensions are added almost every day\u2014in fact, over 135 new extensions have been added to the <a href=\"https:\/\/microsoft.sharepoint.com\/teams\/dd_vsblog\/Blog Post Drafts\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\">Visual Studio Gallery<\/a> already in 2016!<\/p>\n<p>To help you enjoy this creativity from the community, every month or two I\u2019ll be introducing some of the new extensions that caught my eye. Here are the highlights for this month:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"#UWPTile\">UWP Tile Generator<\/a> (great helper for UWP developers)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#OpenBinFolder\">Open Bin Folder Extension<\/a> (nice and simple)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#DocPreview\">DocPreview<\/a> (Preview XML comments)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#JSSnippet\">JavaScript Snippet Pack<\/a> (Code snippets for JavaScript developers)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>After this I\u2019ll also list the <a href=\"#Top10\">top 10 new extensions for January and February<\/a>. And of course, let me know in the comments if I missed a great new extension that you love. At the end of this post I\u2019ll also point you to information on writing your own extension\u2014who knows, maybe you\u2019ll be featured here soon yourself!<\/p>\n<p><a name=\"UWPTile\"><\/a><\/p>\n<h2>UWP Tile Generator by Shen Chauhan<\/h2>\n<p style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"><a href=\"https:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/09611e90-f3e8-44b7-9c83-18dba8275bb2?wt.mc_id=o~msft~vsblog~insideEcoFeb2016\">Download UWP Tile Generator<\/a> from the Visual Studio Gallery<\/p>\n<p>If you are a Universal Windows (UWP) app developer, you know that part of making your app shine is having the right tiles and icons for all the form factors across platforms. Creating these images manually can be time consuming and cumbersome, which is where the <a href=\"https:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/09611e90-f3e8-44b7-9c83-18dba8275bb2?wt.mc_id=o~msft~vsblog~insideEcoFeb2016\">UWP Tile Generator<\/a> comes in handy. It generates all required sizes of tiles for your app right in Visual Studio and integrates them into your app manifest. Definitely a time saver.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/09611e90-f3e8-44b7-9c83-18dba8275bb2?wt.mc_id=o~msft~vsblog~insideEcoFeb2016\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"padding-top: 0px;padding-left: 0px;padding-right: 0px;border-width: 0px\" title=\"UWP Tile Generator extension\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2016\/03\/2016-03-02-Extensions1.png\" alt=\"UWP Tile Generator extension\" width=\"640\" height=\"383\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>\n<a name=\"OpenBinFolder\"><\/a><\/p>\n<h2>Open Bin Folder Extension by John McBridge<\/h2>\n<p style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"><a href=\"https:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/d7c10a53-b3d9-4e8d-9538-88d452da6c07?wt.mc_id=o~msft~vsblog~insideEcoFeb2016\">Download Open Bin Folder<\/a> from the Visual Studio Gallery<\/p>\n<p>The beauty of the <a href=\"https:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/d7c10a53-b3d9-4e8d-9538-88d452da6c07?wt.mc_id=o~msft~vsblog~insideEcoFeb2016\">Open Bin Folder extension<\/a> lies in its simplicity: all it does is add an item to the Solution Explorer context menu that opens your project\u2019s <b>bin<\/b> folder. It doesn\u2019t sound like much, but is a definite time-saver for a somewhat frequent operation! As an added bonus, the source is available on GitHub, so if you\u2019d like to see what a Visual Studio extension is made of, <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/johnmcbride\/OpenBinFolder-VSExtension\">take a look<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/d7c10a53-b3d9-4e8d-9538-88d452da6c07?wt.mc_id=o~msft~vsblog~insideEcoFeb2016\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"padding-top: 0px;padding-left: 0px;padding-right: 0px;border-width: 0px\" title=\"Open Bin Folder extension\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2016\/03\/2016-03-02-Extensions2.png\" alt=\"Open Bin Folder extension\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>\n<a name=\"DocPreview\"><\/a><\/p>\n<h2>DocPreview by Olev Shilo<\/h2>\n<p style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"><a href=\"https:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/c6a203cd-ddfb-42fd-b5e7-bb2ef8db74f4?wt.mc_id=o~msft~vsblog~insideEcoFeb2016\">Download DocPreview<\/a> from the Visual Studio Gallery<\/p>\n<p>Do you document your code? I hope so \ud83d\ude09 XML comments are a great way to do this as you go, especially because the XML tags are picked up by the Visual Studio IntelliSense making it easy for others to reuse your code. The <a href=\"https:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/c6a203cd-ddfb-42fd-b5e7-bb2ef8db74f4?wt.mc_id=o~msft~vsblog~insideEcoFeb2016\">DocPreview extension<\/a> gives you a live HTML preview of your comments in a Tool Window, as you write it. This extension has been <a href=\"https:\/\/docpreview.codeplex.com\/\">open-sourced<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/c6a203cd-ddfb-42fd-b5e7-bb2ef8db74f4?wt.mc_id=o~msft~vsblog~insideEcoFeb2016\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"padding-top: 0px;padding-left: 0px;padding-right: 0px;border-width: 0px\" title=\"DocPreview extension\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2016\/03\/2016-03-02-Extensions3.png\" alt=\"DocPreview extension\" width=\"640\" height=\"373\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>\n<a name=\"JSSnippet\"><\/a><\/p>\n<h2>JavaScript Snippet Pack by Mads Kristensen<\/h2>\n<p style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"><a href=\"https:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/423eb4a3-215f-4a8f-9287-1512618ffda3?wt.mc_id=o~msft~vsblog~insideEcoFeb2016\">Download the JavaScript Snippet Pack<\/a> from the Visual Studio Gallery<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/423eb4a3-215f-4a8f-9287-1512618ffda3?wt.mc_id=o~msft~vsblog~insideEcoFeb2016\">JavaScript Snippet Pack extension<\/a> is a great example of using an extension to add a bunch of useful code Snippets to Visual Studio. The pack comes with over 30 snippets that will come in handy for every JavaScript developer, such as adding an event listener and for each loop. Mads made the <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/madskristensen\/javascriptsnippetpack\">source for this extension available on GitHub<\/a> as well. And guess what?! One handy developer already <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/madskristensen\/JavaScriptSnippetPack\/issues\/1\">ported it to Visual Studio Code<\/a>. This is the power of open source software.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/423eb4a3-215f-4a8f-9287-1512618ffda3?wt.mc_id=o~msft~vsblog~insideEcoFeb2016\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"padding-top: 0px;padding-left: 0px;padding-right: 0px;border-width: 0px\" title=\"JavaScript Snippet Pack extension\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2016\/03\/2016-03-02-Extensions4.png\" alt=\"JavaScript Snippet Pack extension\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>\n<a name=\"Top10\"><\/a><\/p>\n<h2>Top 10 Popular Extensions from January\/February 2016<\/h2>\n<p>As I mentioned in the beginning, we added a great number of new extensions in January and February. Out of the new ones added, here are the 10 most popular ones, three of which we\u2019ve already seen\u2014give them a try!<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/423eb4a3-215f-4a8f-9287-1512618ffda3?wt.mc_id=o~msft~vsblog~insideEcoFeb2016\">JavaScript Snippet Pack<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/f58941e3-13c6-4e97-9235-195f6f380ea3?wt.mc_id=o~msft~vsblog~insideEcoFeb2016\">Supercharger<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/d6279fba-bcff-4857-906d-29faa8a99448?wt.mc_id=o~msft~vsblog~insideEcoFeb2016\">Ionic Pack<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/16052815-0061-473a-9eaf-3b9f4ff6c097?wt.mc_id=o~msft~vsblog~insideEcoFeb2016\">SFML Template project<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/09611e90-f3e8-44b7-9c83-18dba8275bb2?wt.mc_id=o~msft~vsblog~insideEcoFeb2016\">UWP Tile Generator<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/4d809607-87dd-445c-8cd4-585da67c6beb?wt.mc_id=o~msft~vsblog~insideEcoFeb2016\">Dummy Text Generator<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/80dfa560-52e8-437f-bb50-a2b25ce5ac6c?wt.mc_id=o~msft~vsblog~insideEcoFeb2016\">Bootstrap Rifle<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/909387a1-1483-4637-b536-f36692c0bc88?wt.mc_id=o~msft~vsblog~insideEcoFeb2016\">UWP App Skeleton<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/fe6f948b-82e1-40c3-9cfc-e9a8ae9e2e9f?wt.mc_id=o~msft~vsblog~insideEcoFeb2016\">JSON ADO.NET Provider<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/c6a203cd-ddfb-42fd-b5e7-bb2ef8db74f4?wt.mc_id=o~msft~vsblog~insideEcoFeb2016\">DocPreview<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h2>Build your own<\/h2>\n<p>These few examples of simple integrations show a wide range of what you can build through Visual Studio\u2019s extensibility framework. If that piqued your interest, we just launched a new site with some great tutorials and videos on how to get started with Visual Studio extensions: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.visualstudio.com\/integrate\/explore\/explore-vside-vsi?wt.mc_id=o~msft~vsblog~insideEcoFeb2016\">VisualStudio.com\/integrate<\/a>. Take a look and let me know how it goes. I\u2019m also hanging out in our <a href=\"https:\/\/gitter.im\/Microsoft\/extendvs\">extendvs Gitter chat<\/a> as @bertique. Come on by and give me a shout.<\/p>\n<table style=\"width: 640px\" border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td valign=\"top\" width=\"140\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Michael Dick\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2016\/03\/Michael-Dick-2-2.jpg\" alt=\"Michael Dick\" width=\"135\" height=\"135\" \/><\/td>\n<td valign=\"top\" width=\"500\">\n<p style=\"padding-left: 15px\"><b>Michael Dick <\/b>(<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/midi2dot0\">@midi2dot0<\/a>)<b>, <\/b>Senior Program Manager, Visual Studio<b>\n<\/b>Michael Dick is a Program Manager working on the Visual Studio team. Before joining Microsoft, Michael worked at a variety of tech companies and is passionate about developer tools. He is currently focusing on the ecosystem and extensibility experience for Visual Studio.<b><\/b><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last month I showed you a few of my favorite Visual Studio extensions that give great examples of how developers add new features to Visual Studio. With such a vibrant ecosystem around Visual Studio, new extensions are added almost every day\u2014in fact, over 135 new extensions have been added to the Visual Studio Gallery already [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":255385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[472,4980,561],"tags":[237,294,137,376,124,182,12,196],"class_list":["post-5331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gaming","category-java","category-open-source","tag-net","tag-extensions","tag-html","tag-java","tag-javascript","tag-unity","tag-visual-studio","tag-visual-studio-2015"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>Last month I showed you a few of my favorite Visual Studio extensions that give great examples of how developers add new features to Visual Studio. With such a vibrant ecosystem around Visual Studio, new extensions are added almost every day\u2014in fact, over 135 new extensions have been added to the Visual Studio Gallery already [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}