Visual Studio® 2010 All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 1. Exploring Visual Studio Extensions

In This Chapter

• Getting the most out of Visual Studio

• Building the next generation of Web sites with AJAX

• Looking ahead to the future of Visual Studio

The name of this chapter should be "Getting Everything You Can from Visual Studio 2010, Now and in the Future." Since the release of Visual Studio 2008 in October 2007, Microsoft has released a ton of free add-ons that you can download from the Web.

Extending Visual Studio

You have many opportunities to extend Visual Studio, whether it be by using Microsoft add-ons or cool toys created by the community. This section lists a few of both and shares additional resources with you, including how to get hold of trial versions of development tools.

Adding administration and troubleshooting tools

One of the best things about add-ons is that all you have to do to get them is download them. Some help you administer and troubleshoot development projects; others provide new tools for programming Vista and Office 2007.

Administrative and troubleshooting downloads available from Microsoft include the following:

• Team Foundation Server (TFS) Admin Tool: As an administrator, add users to TFS through a single user interface (UI). Download the tool from

  http://msdn2.microsoft.com/tfs2008

• Web Application Installer Projects: Create a project to deploy your ASP.NET Web sites using a Windows Installer Package. Download from

  http://wai.codeplex.com/

• CSS Control Adapter Toolkit: Take control of the elements rendered by Web ...