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Help Shape the VS PowerToys 2.0 Site

  • Artigo

I've formed a virtual team inside Microsoft whose mission is to shape the future of the Visual Studio PowerToys site. Since this site was created for customers we figured we might as well involve customers in the design of the PowerToys 2.0 site.  Consider yourselves part of our virtual team if you'd like!  We don't even have a spec yet or a vision yet, but you can start giving me your feedback now on what the 2.0 site should be.  I'll share our drafts and progress here along the way to get your feedback.

For reference the 1.0 site went live in June 2003 with the following vision:

To help customers get more out of current releases of VS .NET through the release of cool tools from Microsoft that unblock requested scenarios or otherwise make life with VS .NET easier.

The 2.0 vision needs to be adjusted slightly to accommodate the following concepts. 

  • Cool tools are not only developed by Microsoft.  The site needs to be a place for non Microsoft tool developers to list their cool tools as well.
  • A tool does not have to be VS .NET specific.  For example: A tool could be something that extends the Windows Task Manager if it helps developers.
  • Customers need to know when new tools are added.
  • Customers need to find which tools are the best.
  • ???

I'll start by asking the same question I asked our virtual team.  Where do you go now to find tools you need to aid your development once you've already installed your IDE of choice?

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 25, 2004
    Cool Stuff, maybe you could add to inform customers using RSS Feeds :-)
    Hey - and please make sure we dual monitor power developers get the right tools to get most out of dual monitors :-)
  • Anonymous
    March 25, 2004
    It would be good to have some way of filtering the tools or having icons to show useful bits of data. The fields I would be interested in would be:

    - Supports VS 7.0, Supports 7.1, Supports current beta version
    - Supports C++, C#, VB, etc
    - What language it is written in (if source code is provided)

    It might also be useful to have a way of indicating how well an add-in supports a feature. For example my add-in (http://www.codeproject.com/dotnet/VS_File_Finder.asp) should work with all languages that Visual Studio supports but I have only tested it with C++ (as that is what I know). It would probably be useful for developers using other languages but I have no way of checking.
  • Anonymous
    March 25, 2004
    CodeSmith:
    http://www.ericjsmith.net/codesmith/
  • Anonymous
    March 25, 2004
    Where do you go now to find tools you need to aid your development once you've already installed your IDE of choice?

    SysInternals creates a lot of very useful tools (and other cool stuff too). www.sysinternals.com

    Would be nice to have one site to find useful tools :) Hopefully we'll see the fruits of opening up the VSIP SDK end up there too.
  • Anonymous
    March 25, 2004
    Where do I go to find...?

    I keep a Fav list of sites I find during my RSS trolling. When I need something that I don't already have, I check my list of sites.

    Also as I read my RSS feeds and see something that I think I might use in the future, I save/mark it.

    And of course, there's googling to find a tool...

    I completely agree with Andreas, on both how cool sysinternals is and that having a single/main/primary "Dev Power Tools" would be very cool.

  • Anonymous
    March 25, 2004
    I rely a lot on CodeRush (http://www.devexpress.com/?section=/Products/NET/CodeRush), especially making custom templates (invc for System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, for example).

    CodeRush gives me another few points of productivity today. It's not free, but MS should consider buying some of their tech or something...
  • Anonymous
    March 26, 2004
    Screen shots for each item, and a way to leave feedback on the web site (like these comments) for each item.
  • Anonymous
    March 26, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    March 26, 2004
    On policing the screenshots:

    They can submit the screenshot when they submit the tool, or update their submission.

    This way the submission can be aproved by a moderator before it is posted.

    Simmilar to how many download sites work.
  • Anonymous
    March 27, 2004
    One thing that might be extremely useful is some type of categorization. Something that will, at a glance, tell the developer if the tool is for: IDE extension, debugging, performance monitoring, etc.
  • Anonymous
    March 27, 2004
    I like the moderation concept. In fact, I've made it part of the priorities I just posted. Feel free to comment there as well.

    Glen - Yup, it's going to be tough to nail down just the right set of catagories.
  • Anonymous
    March 30, 2004
    thanks
  • Anonymous
    March 30, 2004
    Using Visual Studio .NET
  • Anonymous
    March 31, 2004
    While CodeRush is not free, the CodeRush Core engine and the plug-in wizards are free. So you can use CodeRush to create really cool VS PowerToys and share them with the rest of the world.

    Extending Visual Studio is remarkably easy with CodeRush. CodeRush also has a great deal of power that's simply not available in VSIP or the VS automation model.

    If you're thinking about developing a cool VS PowerToy, you should take a look.
  • Anonymous
    April 05, 2004
    NAnt
    NDoc
    NProf
    NUnit
  • Anonymous
    April 20, 2004
    I'd be interested in a side-by-side Hex Viewer/Editor as part of VS.NET.
  • Anonymous
    April 20, 2004
    Jim: I can't really fulfill your wish for now. I'm mostly planning the site for people to link and comment on their apps.
    josh
  • Anonymous
    April 20, 2004
    @Mark: Can those free bits of CodeRush be downloaded somewhere then? I have digged through the whole DevExpress site but all i can find is a eval version of the commercial product.
  • Anonymous
    May 11, 2004
    How about adding support for themes for the ui
    such as
    ...visual studio 6
    ...borland c++
    ...borland dos c++
    as in like a blue background with yellow identifiers etc
    Dev-C++ (http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html) has taken a good shot at this lately..
  • Anonymous
    May 21, 2004
    The comment has been removed