Free Tool: A Better Visual Studio Command Prompt with Console 2.0
Console 2.0 was created by Marko Bozikovic. OK, it isn't a .NET Framework development tool, but I love it. Console is everything that the Windows or Visual Studio Command Prompt should be. Thanks to growing up in MS-DOS I know all the tricks in the console window (how to paste text from other windows, how to scroll up and edit previous commands), but Console is just so much better than knowing those tricks that I happily abandoned them. Console 2.0 provides multiple tabbed windows (so you can work on more than one problem at once), a much easier copy-and-paste process, and the ability to resize it horizontally to reduce line wrap.
It doesn't take long to set Console up to work as your Visual Studio Command Prompt -- just copy the settings from the VS Command Prompt shortcut in your Start Menu to the Shell and Startup dir: entries in Console's Edit | Settings dialog. You can also customize the number of columns Console displays, the font its uses, and its colors (among other choices). Other than setting Console up to work as my Visual Studio Command Prompt, the only other customization I made was to remove the requirement to hold down the shift key while dragging my mouse to select text.
Posted by Peter Vogel on 02/28/2012