All developers like to personalize their IDE, and even if lately I’m not doing that much of coding, I still like to have my Visual Studio 2013 “pimped” with the extensions that make work easier and faster. Here is a list of the extensions I’ve installed on my VS2013.
ReSharper
I guess this tool doesn’t need introductions: refactorings, code completion, code quality and coding standards checks and many other little helpers that make coding faster.
It’s a commercial tool that costs 134€ and comes with a 30 days trial. More info on JetBrains’ web site.
Nuget
Another extension that doesn’t need an introduction is Nuget. It ships with VS2013, but for older versions of Visual Studio you have to install it manually.
Web Essentials
Visual Studio 2013 has already a lot of HTML/CSS/JS editing features, but Mads Kristensen’s Web Essentials adds even more: zen coding, JSHint, LESS, SASS, CoffeeScript, Markdown, image optimization, intellisense for CSS Media Queries, robots.txt files, HTM5 appcache, AngularJS tags and much more.
Basically an essential extension for anyone doing modern web development using .NET.
SideWaffle
Going along with Web Essentials, SideWaffle adds a bunch of project and item templates and snippets for modern web development (and coming also Windows Phone and Windows Store).
CodeMaid
CodeMaid is an extensions that helps cleaning up and organizing your code. Useful even if you have already ReSharper… and vital if you don’t. Have a look at the documentation to see all that it does.
Productivity Power Tools
From Microsoft, this extension adds some pretty useful features that help you navigate through the IDE faster. Some duplicates features available in ReSharper, but others are unique. So, install it even if you have it. Check features and download it from the visual studio gallery. And there is also a video that explains the new features.
Routing Assistant
Not an extension for everyone, but very useful if you do ASP.NET MVC (ops… maybe it is for everyone then): it explores your solution and visualizes in a tree-like interface all the routes and acts also a routing debugger to help you see which routes are called by specific urls.
It’s a free product from a software company that commercializes ASP.NET MVC libraries.
Code Digger
Based on Pex, this extension analyzes possible executions paths of your code and tries to find possible edge cases and exceptions. Download it from visual studio gallery.
Visual Studio Team Foundation Power Tools
An essential extension for anyone “administering” a TFS 2013 installation. Download it.
What other extensions would you recommend?
Here was my list of extensions: what am I missing? What other would your recommend? Write it in a comment.
UPDATE: Ugo Lattanzi wrote a similar post a few one year and half ago, with extensions for Visual Studio 2012: most of the extensions mentioned there are still relevant for 2013, like Vs Commands, StyleCop and Ghost Doc.