Slick Tools from SlickEdit
Over the last few weeks I've been using the new suite of tools from SlickEdit for Visual Studio. They are organized in two toolboxes, one for editing and one for version control. Installation into Visual Studio 2008 was smooth and painless. Installation into Visual Studio 2005 was not quite as smooth, but I've been using 2005 for fewer tasks since 2008 was released so I'm not really bothered by that. Your mileage may vary.
The Editing Toolbox does not include the SlickEdit editor, but utilities that make the time you spend editing in Visual Studio more productive. Included in the toolbox are:
Aliases and Acronyms: I doubt I'll be using these much. Aliases for directories save you keystrokes when opening files and acronyms are a few characters that expand to longer class or method names. I find myself typing directory names so few times I forget about aliases and by the time I remember what the acronym is for a class name I could have typed it and been on about my business. Maybe I'm just not used to it, but I don't see myself as an alias and acronym kind of guy.
Auto Code Doc Viewer: This one is a gem. Have you ever wanted MSDN style documentation for your code? Have you been a sad developer since NDoc fizzled? Have you ever wondered what happened to Sandcastle? This little jewel does it on the fly, right in Visual Studio. Very nice!
Code Annotations: This is another keeper. Do you ever write notes on a legal pad about some feature in code or an idea you don't want to forget? Just use annotations. The source code file is not modified and you don't have to look through your desk drawers wondering what you did with that legal pad. I think I could learn to love this one.
Comment Wrapping: This is my favorite in this toolbox! I write comments for at least the public and protected members in my code. Then I read the comments, and thinking I'm going to make them clearer, spend the next five minutes rewriting and moving things around, making sure the lines are about the same length, putting the triple-whacks back at the beginning of the line and driving myself nuts over what should be a simple task. That's all history, now I just edit until I'm satisfied with the comment and comment wrapping takes care of wrapping at the proper line length and keeping the triple-whacks where they belong.
Icon Extractor: I'm kind of lukewarm on this one. I just don't do enough icon extraction to get excited. If you do, then this is worth a good look.
Quick Profiling: A profiler is one of those tools that when you need it, nothing else will make you happy. There have been several times in my career that I've looked for a free profiler because I needed to do some quick profiling and didn't want to spend a few hundred dollars to use one for a couple of hours. Having a good one right in Visual Studio is a good thing. Sprinkle a few Trace.WriteLine calls in your code and analyze the timings in a viewer in Visual Studio.
Regex Evaluator: If you have ever used regular expressions you know how complicated they can be. Now you can express yourself regularly with ease.
Code Navigation: This is another utility that I probably won't use much. It allows keyboard shortcuts to take you from a symbol to its definition and to find everywhere that symbol is referenced. Those capabilities are already in Visual Studio; I'm used to how they work and probably won't change my ways.
Word Completion: I can't really say wow about this one. This feature is available in the IDE and I don't really see a need for a replacement.
The Versioning Toolbox is intended to make using source control easier and more convenient.
CVS and Subversion Source Control: Excellent support for both CVS and Subversion is provided and their commands can be used right in the Solution Explorer. If you use either of these popular products, source control just got easier.
Backup History: Easily compare and restore any version of your files.
DIFFzilla: This is my favorite diff and merge tool. It's easy to use and rock solid. Diffing and merging of anything from files to entire source trees is fast and easy.
Find Version: Do you need to find all the files Frank edited and checked in last week? It's easy with this tool. Now you can easily find which files meet specified criteria.
Line Version Info: We've all looked at information stored about the last check-in that affected a file. Now you can look at the same kind of information for each line in a file. The devil is in the details.
Version Graphs: Get a graphical view of the history of your files. This is interesting, but I'm not sure how useful.
Version History: View the complete history of each check-in of your files. The date, branch, author, check-in comments, and labels are available.
Visualizations: Color schemes indicate specific characteristics about each line in your source file. For instance, who wrote this line and when that line was checked in can be answered visually. Talk about an explosion in a paint factory...
SlickEdit has created a couple of toolboxes that contain some very nice tools. They work well in Visual Studio and don't interfere with your normal workflow. For the price of a tank of gas, get yourself some tools.