

The package includes HTML shortcuts and productivity tools, CSS and LESS tools for keeping your style sheets under control, extensions for coding with JavaScript, TypeScript, CoffeeScript and Markdown, and even extensions to the built-in Visual Studio Browser Link dynamic data exchange with open browsers in your development environment.Īnother reason to check out Web Essentials: Scott Hanselman says, "It's the Web Team's most important feature playground. Web Essentials, created by Microsoft's Mads Kristensen, is a general-purpose collection of Web development-focused extensions and enhancements for Visual Studio. This month I'll take a look at some much more general tools and extensions for Web development.

In my September column I shared some pretty specific tools for Web API documentation. An IDE like Visual Studio smooths over a lot of rough edges by including IntelliSense code completion, project-based scaffolding, built-in Web server and database tools, testing, and more.Įven with Visual Studio, however, the development community has created a treasure trove of useful tools that make your development time more productive and less frustrating. You can do all of this with pretty much any text editor and browser.

A little HTML, a little CSS, a little code, a little Ctrl+F5 and you're good to go. Building Web apps seems like it ought to be easy enough.
