Coinciding with the formal release of Visual Studio 2017, the popular Productivity Power Tools (PPT) extension has been updated and made available by Microsoft. This edition of the PPT includes 15 extensions updated for VS2017.
One of the advantages of the PPT is that it allows Microsoft to track which components are most frequently used by developers, so that the most popular ones can be considered for future integration with Visual Studio. One example is the addition of Structure Guidelines to VS2017, which was a part of the Productivity Power Tools for VS2015 under the name Structure Visualizer.
Microsoft's Justin Clareburt has provided a brief summary of each extension:
- Align Assignments: Adds a command to Visual Studio to align assignments. By default, this is bound to Ctrl+Alt+]
- Copy as HTML: Adds support to copy the selected editor text to clipboard in HTML format
- Ctrl+Click Go To Definition: Make Ctrl+Click perform a “Go To Definition” on the identifier under the cursor
- Custom Document Well: Provides configurable behavior for the document well in Visual Studio
- Double-Click Maximize: Double-click window headers to maximize and dock them
- Editor Guidelines: Adds vertical column guides to the editor
- Fix Mixed Tabs: Detects when you have mixed tabs and spaces and offers to fix them for you automatically
- Match Margin: Draws markers in the scroll bar and highlights text in the editor for matches of the word under the caret
- Middle-Click Scroll: Enables scrolling in the editor pane using the middle-click mouse button
- Peek Help: Adds a command to Visual Studio to show F1 Help inline in the editor. By default, the command is bound to Alt+F1.\
- Power Commands for Visual Studio: A set of useful extensions for the Visual Studio IDE, including Remove and Sort Usings, Copy Path and Open Command Prompt
- Quick Launch Tasks: Adds accessibility and settings tasks to the Quick Launch tool
- Shrink Empty Lines: Shrinks lines that contain neither text nor numbers so that more lines can be displayed in the editor
- Solution Error Visualizer: Highlights errors and warnings in the Solution Explorer. Also allows Solution Explorer to be filtered by error type
- Time Stamp Margin: Adds a time stamp margin to the debug output window
There is an installer bundle provided that will enable all of the PPT components by default, and individual extensions can be disabled if the developer does not want to use them. Developers interested in examining how the extensions work or contributing to the project can visit PPT’s repository on GitHub.