Visual Studio Toolbox

Mads Kristensen Unveils 'The Essentials' Visual Studio Extension Pack for All Devs

Visual Studio senior program manager Mads Kristensen has created a new extension pack for the IDE to ease the acquisition of the basic tools that would benefit all developers.

The word "all" in that sentence is key as it's an adjunct offering to more targeted extension packs for specific types of development: Web Essentials, obviously for web development, and Extensibility Essentials, for writing VS extensions themselves.

So The Essentials pack for Visual Studio 2019 contains extensions "no developer should be without."

Specifically, those are:

The idea stemmed from a presentation he conducted during this year's online Build developer conference.

"I'm a big fan of Visual Studio extensions and write quite a few of them when I have the time," he said. "So, when asked several times for a quick and easy way to install the most useful extensions, I said 'sure, I'll make an extension pack.' "

He isn't kidding when he says he writes quite a few extensions: a search for "Mads Kristensen" in the Visual Studio Marketplace reveals a whopping 130 offerings authored by him, with a few more created by others but adapted from his, or otherwise including his name.

Some of Mads Kristensen's Top-Rated Extensions
[Click on image for larger view.] Some of Mads Kristensen's Top-Rated Extensions (source: Visual Studio Marketplace).

He invited developers to see if they could offer improvements and pointed to a walkthrough for creating an extension pack and source code on GitHub for his new offering, though he said the latter is a bit of a misnomer "because no code is required to create an extension pack. It's just a JSON file built in a certain way."

Having been originally published on the marketplace early last month and updated just today (July 9), The Essentials pack has been installed 2,194 times as of this writing, earning a perfect 5.0 rating from five developers who reviewed it.

About the Author

David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.

comments powered by Disqus

Featured

  • Mastering Blazor Authentication and Authorization

    At the Visual Studio Live! @ Microsoft HQ developer conference set for August, Rockford Lhotka will explain the ins and outs of authentication across Blazor Server, WebAssembly, and .NET MAUI Hybrid apps, and show how to use identity and claims to customize application behavior through fine-grained authorization.

  • Linear Support Vector Regression from Scratch Using C# with Evolutionary Training

    Dr. James McCaffrey from Microsoft Research presents a complete end-to-end demonstration of the linear support vector regression (linear SVR) technique, where the goal is to predict a single numeric value. A linear SVR model uses an unusual error/loss function and cannot be trained using standard simple techniques, and so evolutionary optimization training is used.

  • Low-Code Report Says AI Will Enhance, Not Replace DIY Dev Tools

    Along with replacing software developers and possibly killing humanity, advanced AI is seen by many as a death knell for the do-it-yourself, low-code/no-code tooling industry, but a new report belies that notion.

  • Vibe Coding with Latest Visual Studio Preview

    Microsoft's latest Visual Studio preview facilitates "vibe coding," where developers mainly use GitHub Copilot AI to do all the programming in accordance with spoken or typed instructions.

  • Steve Sanderson Previews AI App Dev: Small Models, Agents and a Blazor Voice Assistant

    Blazor creator Steve Sanderson presented a keynote at the recent NDC London 2025 conference where he previewed the future of .NET application development with smaller AI models and autonomous agents, along with showcasing a new Blazor voice assistant project demonstrating cutting-edge functionality.

Subscribe on YouTube