Visual Studio gallery just got simple

The Visual Studio Gallery provides quick access to tools, controls, and templates to help you get the most out of Visual Studio. Visual Studio 2010 Extension Manager is integrated with the Visual Studio Gallery. It brings the Visual Studio Gallery into Visual Studio IDE. There is no need to use the web browser for searching or to run the setup program. Within Visual Studio 2010, the Extension Manager is opened through Tools | Extension Manager menu.

When Extension Manager opens, it lists the extensions already installed. If updates for extensions are available, it lists those too. In the left pane, by clicking on the Online Gallery tab, you can browse and search for extensions in Visual Studio Gallery. When you select an extension, the related description is displayed in the right pane. Clicking on the download button, Extension Manager immediately starts downloading the selected extension.

There are quite a few extensions that are must-have for developers. On the Internet, people tell you their favourite extensions. Here is a list of my picks. You are encouraged to try them out. It is easy and you always can disable and uninstall them if you don’t like them.

• Visual Studio Productivity Power Tool, a set of tools to improve productivity, such as solution navigator, Tab well UI, Searchable Add Reference Dialog, and etc
• Snippet Designer, an extension that lets you create code snippet in Visual Studio
• Spell Check, an extension that provides spell check in plain text files, comments, strings and HTML/ASP
• GhostDoc, an extension that generates XML document comments for C#
• Feature Builder Power Tool, an extension that helps creating extensions