5 Top Visual Studio Code Extensions in 2020

5 Top Visual Studio Code Extensions in 2020

Visual Studio by Microsoft is one of the top integrated development environments (IDEs). It enables developers to integrate their existing development suite with other applications, adding a lot of features in the process to boost your productivity. As a part of Microsoft’s efforts to open source their code, Visual Studio is available as free and open-source software.

One reason behind the popularity of Visual Studio is its extensibility with the help of plugins and extensions. These add ons enhance the core functionality of the IDE enable you to make your development process more efficient and convenient.

1. Import Cost

In the development process, you may often find yourself adding dependencies to your project. While modular development is a crucial part of software development today, it is a good idea to ensure that you are prudent with your imports. The Import Cost plugin for JavaScript and TypeScript allows you to be wary of any dependencies in real-time. Import Cost shows the size of a dependency inline when you are adding it to your code. It is a lightweight plugin that provides foresight and helps in efficient dependency management. The documentation lists down various import syntaxes for which this plugin shows the size of dependencies.

2. File Utils

While Visual Studio’s core functionality works well when coding on a file, you may feel the need to enhance the abilities to manage multiple files in your project and its dependencies. The File Utils extension enables you to perform file operations through the command palette. You can bring up the command palette and select a file to perform simple file operations on it. You can duplicate (copy), move, delete, and rename a file, in addition to a basic folder related operations. It is a useful plugin that lets you manage your project files without leaving the confines of the visual studio.

3. Project Manager

While the File Utils extension lets you perform simple file operations, the Project Manager plugin enables you to go further in the management of multiple projects. It first adds a new sidebar to enable working with multiple projects. This extension helps you manage your Git, SVN, or Mercurial repositories as well. It further allows us to manage remote repositories too.

In addition to the GUI based features, this extension adds commands to work with projects too. You can tweak the settings to further customize its features to your liking.

With advanced features like remote repository management and interactive commands, the Project Manager extension provides an important arsenal in your tool to enhance your development cycle.

4. SVG Viewer

SVG stands for scalable vector graphics, and SVG files are text files that store vector images for the web. If you open an SVG file in a text editor, it typically displays the textual content of these files. If you are working on editing these files directly, you may wish to view how such files are rendered by Visual Studio.

The SVG Viewer plugin allows you to visualize SVG files, thereby saving you the time to use a different application to review your work. It essentially saves up time when you are working on making quick edits to SVG files.

5. Code Spell Checker

A bulk of errors that developers get are often solved by correcting spelling mistakes in variable, function, and package names. Further, you may also make spelling errors while writing a comment, description, or documentation. This package helps in highlighting errors in your file. This package helps check your spellings in a variety of popular programming languages. You can also tweak a setting to make the code spell checker package work with specific file types.

While it has support for English (US) and English (GB) when you install it, add on dictionaries are available for eight languages and medical terms. It makes a small, yet robust addition to your arsenal of best Visual Studio extensions.