Updating... 
Microsoft  Home Page
Home PageCategories: ASP.NET, Code conversion - Language migration,
Designed to help you convert ASP pages and applications to ASP.NET. It does not make the conversion process completely automatic, but it will speed up your project by automating some of the steps required for migration.
Built for .NET |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: ASP.NET
Latest version: 1.0
Added 2005-09-19Updated 2006-12-15
Package of Web development technologies that integrates a set of client script libraries with the server-based development platform of ASP.NET 2.0.
ASP.NET AJAX enables you to develop Web applications that can update data on a Web page by making direct calls to a Web server — without needing to round trip the page — following in this the AJAX technique. With ASP.NET AJAX, you can take advantage of ASP.NET and server-side code while doing much of the work in the browser.
Features include:
- Client script libraries that provide a solution for creating client-based Web applications. The client script libraries support object-oriented development, cross-browser compatibility, asynchronous calls to Web services, and behaviors and components for creating the UI.
- Web server controls that provide a declarative way to emit markup and client script for AJAX features.
- Web services, such as ASP.NET profiles, that can add server-side features to an Atlas application.
Previous name: Atlas
Built for .NET 2 |
Library |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: ASP.NET, MVC,
Latest version: 3 Preview 1
Added 2009-01-28Updated 2010-07-27
Enables you to build Model View Controller (MVC) applications by using the ASP.NET framework.
ASP.NET MVC is an alternative, not a replacement, for ASP.NET Web Forms that offers the following benefits and features:
- Separation of concerns and application tasks (input logic, business logic, and UI logic)
- Testability (support for Test-Driven Development)
- Fine-grained control over HTML and JavaScript
- Intuitive URLs through a URL-mapping component
- Extensible and pluggable: the components of the ASP.NET MVC framework are designed so that they can be replaced or customized
- Support for existing ASP.NET features (forms authentication, Windows authentication, URL authorization, membership and roles, output and data caching, session and profile state management, health monitoring, the configuration system, and the provider architecture)
- Multiple view engine support (including Razor)
Built for .NET 2 |
Built for .NET 4 |
Add-in |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: ASP.NET, Internet and communications,
Latest version: 2.0
Added 2007-03-11Updated 2007-06-19
The RSS toolkit includes support for consuming as well as publishing RSS feeds in ASP.NET applications. It includes support for creating and consuming RSS, RDF, ATOM and OPML feeds in your applications.
Features include:
- RSS Data Source control to consume feeds in ASP.NET applications: Works with ASP.NET data bound controls; Implements schema to generate columns at design time; Supports auto-generation of columns at runtime (via ICustomTypeDescriptor implementation)
- Caching of downloaded feeds both in-memory and on-disk (persisted across process restarts)
- Generation of strongly typed classes for RSS feeds (including strongly typed channel, items, image, handler) based on a RSS URL (the toolkit recognizes RSS and RDF feeds) or a file containing RSS definition. Allows programmatically download and create RSS channels using strongly-typed classes.
- Support for generation of RSS feeds in ASP.NET application including: RSS HTTP handler (strongly typed HTTP handlers are generated automatically by the build providers) to generate the feed; RSS HyperLink control (that can point to RSS HTTP handler) to create RSS links; Optional secure encoding of user name into query string to allow generation of personalized feeds
- Set of classes for programmatic consumption and generation of RSS feed in a late-bound way, without using strongly types generated classes
Built for .NET 2 |
Library |
Free or free version available |
Source code provided |
Home PageCategories: Tracing - Logging - Monitoring
Latest version: 5.7
Added 2011-01-04
.NET application performance monitoring.
Features include:
- Automatic discovery of application dependencies
- Graphical application topology view displays dependency between distributed components
- Optimizing business productivity with always-on, real-time monitoring, and rapid error resolution of business critical applications
- Distributed web services and outside-in monitoring
- Monitor and measure service-level delivery (SLAs)
Built for .NET 2 |
Home PageCategories: Code analysis - Standards verifiers, Security,
Latest version: 1.0 CTP
Added 2008-12-15
Binary code analysis tool that helps identify common variants of certain prevailing vulnerabilities that can give rise to common attack vectors such as Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), SQL Injection and XPath Injection.
CAT.NET (Code Analysis Tool .NET) is a snap-in to the Visual Studio IDE that helps you identify security flaws within a managed code application you are developing. It does so by scanning the binary and/or assembly of the application, and tracing the data flow among its statements, methods, and assemblies. This includes indirect data types such as property assignments and instance tainting operations. The engine works by reading the target assembly and all reference assemblies used in the application - module-by-module - and then analyzing all of the methods contained within each. It finally displays the issues its finds in a list that you can use to jump directly to the places in your application's source code where those issues were found.
Supported rules :
- Cross Site Scripting
- SQL Injection
- Process Command Injection
- File Canonicalization
- Exception Information
- LDAP Injection
- XPATH Injection
- Redirection to User Controlled Site
Built for .NET |
Built for .NET 2 |
Add-in |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Miscellaneous
Latest version: 1.1.20215
Added 2009-02-27
Provides a language-agnostic way to express coding assumptions in .NET programs.
The contracts take the form of preconditions, postconditions, and object invariants. Contracts act as checked documentation of your external and internal APIs. The contracts are used to improve testing via runtime checking, enable static contract verification, and documentation generation.
Code Contracts bring the advantages of design-by-contract (DbC) programming to all .NET programming languages.
Two tools are provided:
- Runtime Checking: a binary rewriter modifies a program by injecting the contracts, which are checked as part of program execution. Rewritten programs improve testability: each contract acts as an oracle, giving a test run a pass/fail indication. Automatic testing tools, such as Pex, take advantage of contracts to generate more meaningful unit tests by filtering out meaningless test arguments that don't satisfy the pre-conditions.
- Static Checking: a static checker can decide if there are any contract violations without running the program. It checks for implicit contracts, such as null dereferences and array bounds, as well as the explicit contracts.
Built for .NET 2 |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Rich client UI
Latest version: December 2005 RTW
Added 2006-02-16
Reusable, source code–based component based on the .NET Framework 2.0 that provides practices to build smart client user interfaces based on design patterns such as the Composite pattern, in which simple user interface parts can be combined to create complex solutions, but at the same time allowing these parts to be independently developed, tested, and deployed.
This application block is designed to support the development of smart client line-of-business applications such as the ones found in the following scenarios:
- Online transaction processing (OLTP) front-ends, in areas such as stock distribution centers or data entry applications
- Rich client portals to back-end services, such as portals to government services or bank teller applications
- UI intensive information-worker standalone applications, such as those used by call center staff, IT support desks, or stock traders
It facilitates the design and implementation of your client applications in three areas:
- It allows your application to be based on the concept of modules or plug-ins.
- It allows developers with shell expertise to build components that hide user interface complexity from the business logic development.
- It facilitates development using patterns for loose coupling between modules.
Built for .NET |
Built for .NET 2 |
Library |
Free or free version available |
Source code provided |
Home PageCategories: Graphics
Latest version: 9.0
Added 2003-12-18
Group of technologies designed for running and displaying applications rich in multimedia elements such as full-color graphics, video, 3-D animation, and surround sound, on Windows-based computers.
DirectX 9.0 brings the first release of the Managed API for developing DirectX-based programs and games.
Built for .NET |
Library |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Caching, Persistence - Data-tier, Security, Tracing - Logging - Monitoring,
Latest version: 5.0 - April 2010
Added 2005-02-10Updated 2010-05-06
Library of application blocks designed to assist developers with common enterprise development challenges. Application blocks are a type of guidance, provided as source code that can be used "as is," extended, or modified by developers to use on enterprise development projects.
Application blocks help address the common problems that developers face from one project to the next. They are designed to encapsulate the Microsoft recommended best practices for .NET-based applications. They also address scenarios not directly supported by the underlying class libraries.
Contains the following general purpose application blocks:
- Caching Application Block: incorporate a local cache in applications.
- Cryptography Application Block: incorporate hashing and symmetric encryption in applications.
- Data Access Application Block: incorporate standard database functionality in applications.
- Exception Handling Application Block: developers and policy makers can create a consistent strategy for processing exceptions that occur throughout the architectural layers of enterprise applications.
- Logging Application Block: include standard logging functionality in applications.
- Security Application Block: incorporate authorization and security caching functionality in applications.
- Validation Application Block: allows you to centrally define validation rules using configuration or attributes, and validate data from anywhere in your application, including integration with Windows Forms, ASP.NET and WCF.
- Policy Injection Application Block: provides an approach for separating cross-cutting concerns from business logic using declarative policies that are attached at runtime to methods on your objects.
- Unity: dependency injection container
Also includes:
- The Application Block Software Factory: simplifies the process of building application blocks and providers through guidance automation.
- Visual Studio-integrated configuration editor: edit Enterprise Library configuration files directly within Visual Studio.
Enterprise Library also includes a set of core functions, including configuration, instrumentation, and object builder services. These functions are used by all other application blocks.
Built for .NET |
Built for .NET 2 |
Built for .NET 4 |
Library |
Free or free version available |
Source code provided |
Home PageCategories: Localization
Latest version: 1.0
Added 2003-05-20
Covers localization of a Web site's page layout and presentation using resource files by extending the .NET Framework foundation and provides code implementing resource string management via a database, localization of complex data types and automatic building of resource files.
The Enterprise Localization Toolkit provides a way to plugin localization into an ASP.NET application with a web-based management application allowing to add new translations or add additional localization information to controls.
Built for .NET |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: SVG - XAML - WPF - Silverlight
Latest version: 4
Added 2008-10-15Updated 2010-06-07
Design tool to create applications for Windows using WPF, or for the web with Silverlight.
Features include:
- WYSIWYG design surface
- Controls and containers: use standard controls (buttons, scroll bars, list boxes, menus, radio buttons, and checkboxes) or composite multiple control elements together to form compound controls.
- Timeline based on time instead of abstract frames
- Styling and customization
- Import geometry from leading 3D authoring tools, or create models directly
- Databinding: Bind your interface elements to each other, to user input, or to data from Web services and .NET objects
- Design-time sample data
- Edit XAML code in either code or split view with colored syntax highlighting
- Visual Studio Integration: share projects, Silverlight, WPF, as well as in-progress XAML designs with Visual Studio
- Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator import
- Team Foundation Server integration for versioning and distribution
- SketchFlow
* Prototyping/Sketching: experiment with the flow of an application UI, the layout of the individual screens and how the application will transition from one state of the application to another.
* Interactive Review: collect annotations and feedback from the player.
* Create project documentation for your prototypes
Built for .NET 2 |
Built for .NET 4 |
Built for Silverlight |
Home PageCategories: Code analysis - Standards verifiers
Latest version: 10.0
Added 2003-05-20Updated 2011-04-02
Graphical User Interface and command line tools for performing static code analysis of .NET code.
FxCop provides hundreds of rules that perform various types of analysis: Design, Globalization, Interoperability, Maintainability, Mobility, Naming, Performance, Portability, Reliability, Security, Usage.
The FxCop functionality is fully integrated into Visual Studio 2010 Premium and Ultimate editions.
Built for .NET |
Built for .NET 2 |
Built for .NET 4 |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: IDEs - IDE add-ins
Latest version: February 2008
Added 2008-02-17
Using the GAT, you can make reusable code and pattern assets directly available in Visual Studio 2005 and 2008.
The GAT is designed to simplify integrating reusable code into applications allowing architects to automate development activities that developers would usually have to perform manually; often by following a series of instructions. By using the toolkit, architects can also ensure that repetitive and often error-prone activities are performed in a consistent manner, streamlining and accelerating the development process.
The toolkit can be used with assets developed in-house or by third parties; such as the assets created by the Microsoft patterns & practices team. These assets can be exposed to developers within Visual Studio, and in some cases, configured by using configuration files, templates, and wizards.
In order to use GAT, you must first install the Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX), which expands Visual Studio by allowing guidance packages to run.
Built for .NET 2 |
Add-in |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Code analysis - Standards verifiers, Miscellaneous,
Latest version: 20080124
Added 2007-01-12Updated 2008-02-17
Tool that enables discovery, composition and consumption of development guidance.
Guidance Explorer installs with a connection to the Microsoft Patterns & Practices guidance library including performance and security topics for .NET, ASP.NET, and ADO.NET applications. The guidance library contains a variety of guidance types including checklists and guidelines covering design, implementation and deployment topics.
Usage scenarios:
- Find relevant patterns & practices guidance
- Build customized checklists for your development scenarios
- Build customized guidelines for your development scenarios
- You can build custom sets of guidance and share with your team as recommended practice.
Includes:
- Guidance Explorer: smart client that allows browsing local or remote libraries from a Windows Forms client application.
- Guidance Explorer Web Edition: allows a user to browse guidance from the online store. Unlike the smart client it is a read-only view on guidance.
- Online Guidance Store: provides a mechanism for publishing to, and sharing from, a guidance library on the web. It is a web service interface backed by a SQL Server 2005 database.
- Guidance Explorer Authoring Toolkit: stripped down version of Guidance Explorer that does not come with a guidance library and includes just the basic guidance types.
Built for .NET |
Built for .NET 2 |
Free or free version available |
Source code provided |
Home PageCategories: Documentation - Code commenting
Latest version: Beta
Added 2004-04-28
Integrates help with Visual Studio.
Microsoft provides the tools necessary to create the compiled help (HxS) files that make up a help collection. The Help Integration Wizard can assemble those HxS files into a help collection and create a Windows Installer project for the help collection's distribution.
A help collection that is integrated with Visual Studio .NET gives developers ready access to documentation through the IDE's Contents, Index, Search, and Dynamic Help windows.
Built for .NET |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Interoperability
Latest version: 2.1
Added 2006-10-09Updated 2010-04-24
Visual Studio add-in that simplifies the process of displaying .NET forms and controls in a Visual Basic 6 application.
The Interop Forms Toolkit allows developers to incorporate VB.NET Windows Forms into their VB6 applications. This toolkit helps you bring the power of .NET to your existing VB6 applications, by allowing them to display .NET WinForms from within the same application. Instead of upgrading the entire code base, these applications can now be extended one form at a time. The goal is a phased upgrade, with production releases at the end of each iteration containing both VB6 and VB.NET forms running in the same VB6 process.
Supports Visual Studio 2008 and 2010.
Built for .NET 2 |
Add-in |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Code conversion - Language migration
Latest version: 3.0
Added 2003-05-20Updated 2003-12-05
Tool that automatically converts existing Java-language code into C# for developers who want to move existing applications to the .NET Framework.
JLCA (Java Language Conversion Assistant) is integrated with Visual Studio .NET.
Supports converting J2EE 1.3 and JDK 1.3 libraries as well as EJB, JAAS, JCE, JMS, JNDI, and RMI. This includes Java Server Pages and Enterprise Java Beans.
Built for .NET |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Miscellaneous
Latest version: 1.0
Added 2005-03-22
Allows you to compare two versions of an assembly, and determine the differences.
LibCheck reports the differences as a combination of "removed" and "added" APIs. The tool is limited to looking only at APIs (i.e., it can't check for behavioral changes), and only compares public differences, or changes which are deemed to be "breaking". The tool can be used to determine what has changed between one version of your assembly and another, and can help ensure that you won't introduce any breaking changes to clients of your assembly.
Built for .NET |
Free or free version available |
Source code provided |
Home PageCategories: Frameworks
Latest version: Preview 2
Added 2008-09-16
Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) is a library that enables the creation of extensible applications.
MEF offers discovery and composition capabilities that you can leverage to load application extensions.
Built for .NET 2 |
Library |
Free or free version available |
Source code provided |
Home PageCategories: Tracing - Logging - Monitoring
Latest version: 1.0
Added 2006-02-16
Managed Stack Explorer (MSE) is a tool that provides a way to monitor .NET 2.0 managed processes and their stacks.
The ability to view a program’s stack and how it changes over time is an important method in determining reasons for possible errors. MSE provides an interface to allow you to monitor multiple processes at once and build periodic stack log files. MSE works by attaching to a process when a stack trace is requested, then detaching the moment the stack trace has been retrieved.
Built for .NET |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Miscellaneous
Latest version: Beta 1
Added 2009-11-19
Language-neutral bioinformatics toolkit built as an extension to the Microsoft .NET Framework.
Currently Microsoft Biology Foundation (MBF) implements a range of parsers for common bioinformatics file formats; a range of algorithms for manipulating DNA, RNA, and protein sequences; and a set of connectors to biological Web services such as NCBI BLAST.
Built for .NET 2 |
Library |
Free or free version available |
Source code provided |
Home PageCategories: Charting
Latest version: 3.5.0.0
Added 2009-11-25
ASP.NET and Windows Forms Chart Controls for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1.
Features include:
- Visual Studio design time support
- 25 distinct chart types
- 3D support for most chart types
- 3D customization, including perspective, lighting, rotation, border skins, anti-aliasing, transparencies, isometric projections, shadows, and more
- Unlimited number of chart areas
- Automatic and manual layout and alignment management
- Automatic and manual scaling
- Logarithmic scaling for any base
- Fully customizable legends
- Chart annotations, scale breaks, interlaced strip lines, drill-down charts, tool tips, data labels, and more
- Zooming and scrolling (Windows Forms)
- Data binding
- Data copying, merging, splitting, sorting, searching, grouping, and filtering
- Data exporting
- Binary and XML serialization
- Empty data point handling
- Unlimited number of data series and data points
- Support for dates, times, currency, and more
- More than 50 financial and statistical formulas for data analysis and transformation
- Real-time chart manipulation
- Post-paint and pre-paint events
- Support for AJAX click events
- State management (ASP.NET)
- Binary streaming (ASP.NET)
- Animated frame rate control (ASP.NET)
Built for .NET 2 |
Library |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: SVG - XAML - WPF - Silverlight
Latest version: Visual Studio 2010 and Silverlight 4 (30319.166)
Added 2008-04-23Updated 2010-05-18
Add-on for Visual Studio 2010 for developing Silverlight 4 and RIA Services applications.
It provides a Silverlight project system for developing Silverlight applications using C# or Visual Basic.
Features include:
- VB and C# project templates
- IntelliSense and code generators for XAML
- XAML design preview
- Debugging of Silverlight applications
- Remote debugging of Silverlight applications for Mac
- Web reference support
- RIA Services application templates and libraries
- WCF Templates
- Team Build and command line build support
- Support for cached transparent assemblies
- Support for ASP.NET server integration
- Support for Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Web Developer 2010 Express
Built for .NET 4 |
Built for Silverlight |
Add-in |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Graphics
Latest version: 2007
Added 2007-04-02
Graph layout engine and viewing tool.
MSAGL (Microsoft Automatic Graph Layout) is built on the principle of the Sugiyama scheme; it produces so called layered, or hierarchical layouts. This kind of a layout naturally applies to graphs with some flow of information. The graph could represent a control flow graph of a program, a state machine, a class hierarchy, etc.
Previous name: GLEE
Built for .NET 2 |
Library |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Builds
Latest version: 1.0
Added 2006-02-13
MSBee means MSBuild Everett Environment, Everett beeing the codename for .NET 1.1.
MSBee is an extension for MSBuild that allows developers to build managed applications in Visual Studio 2005 that target .NET 1.1.
Built for .NET |
Add-in |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: IDEs - IDE add-ins
Latest version: 1 CTP 1
Added 2010-10-16
Package management system for adding libraries and tools to .NET projects.
NuGet automates the common and tedious tasks when referencing a package as well as its dependencies.
NuGet is available as a command line tool, integrated console window inside of Visual Studio 2010, a UI element in the Visual Studio context menu, and a series of PowerShell 2.0 cmdlets.
Previous name: NuPack
Built for .NET 4 |
Add-in |
Free or free version available |
Source code provided |
Home PageCategories: Testing
Latest version: 0.9
Added 2008-05-26Updated 2009-02-17
Automated exploratory testing tool.
Pex (Program EXploration) is an assistant to the programmer that automatically produces a traditional unit test suite with high code coverage from a parameterized unit test. In addition, it suggests to the programmer how to fix the bugs.
Pex generates unit tests from hand-written parameterized unit tests through automated exploratory testing based on dynamic symbolic execution.
Unit Tests: parameterless methods that test a single unit of code.
Parameterized unit tests: same as above, but with parameters.
Automated exploratory testing: a tool-supported process of running, learning and testing code at the same time.
Dynamic symbolic execution: a combination of static analysis and runtime monitoring to compute test inputs.
Pex comes with a Visual Studio add-in, and also works from the command line.
Built for .NET 2 |
Add-in |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: ASP.NET, Code conversion - Language migration,
Latest version: Beta
Added 2003-12-05Updated 2004-01-13
Designed to help you convert PHP pages and applications to ASP.NET. It does not make the conversion process completely automatic, but it will speed up your project by automating some of the steps required for migration.
Built for .NET |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Reporting
Latest version: 1.0
Added 2006-10-09
Allows you to print a Windows Form as a simple report.
Built for .NET 2 |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Miscellaneous
Latest version: 1.0
Added 2008-03-03
Provides developers a way to extract hard coded strings from the code to resource files.
Features include:
- Works with C# and VB.NET
- Supports all project types that ships with Visual Studio 2005 including web sites and web application projects
- A preview window shows changes
- Finds other instances of the text being replaced in the project automatically
- Lists existing resources by their similarity level to the text being replaced
- Automatically replaces hard coded string with a reference to resource entry
Built for .NET 2 |
Add-in |
Free or free version available |
Source code provided |
Home PageCategories: Miscellaneous
Latest version: 1.5
Added 2006-06-24Updated 2007-07-23
Windows-based environment to create robotics applications across a variety of hardware.
The Microsoft Robotics Studio delivers three areas of software:
- A services-oriented extensible runtime architecture that can span a variety of hardware and devices. The programming interface can be used to address robots using 8-bit or 16-bit processors as well as 32-bit systems with multi-core processors and devices from simple touch sensors to laser distance finding devices. The runtime uses a .NET-based concurrency libraryfor asynchronous application development.
- A set of tools that make programming and debugging robot applications scenarios easier. These include a visual simulation environment that uses the Ageia Technologies PhysX engine.
- A set of technology libraries services samples to help developers get started with writing robot applications.
Third parties can extend the functionality of the platform by providing additional libraries and services. Both remote (PC-based) and autonomous (robot-based) execution scenarios can be developed using a selection of programming languages, including C# VB.NET, JScript, IronPython, and third-party languages that conform to its services-based architecture.
Built for .NET 2 |
Library |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Builds
Latest version: 2.0.051004.000
Added 2003-11-11
Solution Build and Deployment Process was designed to reduce the cost of developing a solution by improving development team efficiency during the build process. Starting with machine requirements, the process guided development team members through daily build procedures, deployment practices, testing, the build environment, tools, and configuration utilities. Tools are provided to perform regular builds or .NET solutions and to configure websites, virtual directories, create users, configure BizTalk etc.
Also includes: support for Whidbey and a visual editor for MSBuild files.
Built for .NET |
Free or free version available |
Source code provided |
Home PageCategories: ASP.NET, SVG - XAML - WPF - Silverlight,
Latest version: 3.0
Added 2007-04-30Updated 2009-07-27
Software Development Kit (SDK) for creating applications that use Silverlight 3.
This SDK provides documentation, libraries and tools for developing Silverlight applications.
Built for .NET 2 |
Built for Silverlight |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: SVG - XAML - WPF - Silverlight
Latest version: April 2010
Added 2009-03-19Updated 2010-04-15
Collection of Silverlight controls, components and utilities made available outside the normal Silverlight release cycle.
The Silverlight Toolkit adds new functionality for designers and developers, and provides the community an efficient way to help shape product development by contributing ideas and bug reports. It includes full source code, unit tests, samples and documentation for 26 new controls covering charting, styling, layout, and user input.
Components: AutoCompleteBox, Calendar, ChildWindow, DataGrid, DataPager, DatePicker, GridSplitter, HeaderedItemsControl, TabControl, TreeView, DockPanel, Expander, HeaderedContentControl, Label, NumericUpDown, Viewbox, WrapPanel, Accordion, Charting, DataForm, DomainUpDown, ImplicitStyleManager, LayoutTransformer, Rating, TimePicker, TimeUpDown, GlobalCalendar, TransitioningContentControl, TreeMap, BusyIndicator
Also provides 11 themes.
Built for .NET 2 |
Built for Silverlight |
Library |
Free or free version available |
Source code provided |
Home PageCategories: Internet and communications
Latest version: 1.0
Added 2004-03-02
This block is intended to serve as an architectural model for developers who want to add offline capabilities to their smart client applications.
The block demonstrates how to:
- Detect the presence or absence of network connectivity.
- Cache the required data so that the application can continue to function even when the network connection is not available.
- Synchronize the client application state and/or data with the server when the network connection becomes available.
Built for .NET |
Library |
Free or free version available |
Source code provided |
Home PageCategories: Rich client UI
Latest version: April 2008
Added 2007-06-18Updated 2008-05-02
The Smart Client Software Factory (SCSF) helps architects and developers create composite smart client applications based on the Composite UI Application Block.
A composite smart client application is made up of a number of discrete, independent, yet functional pieces. These pieces are integrated together within a host environment (such as a Windows Form application) to form a fully coherent smart client solution.
The factory provides tools (Visual Studio 2008 extensions), examples, how-tos and documentation on building these winforms applications.
Only previous versions support Visual Studio 2005.
Built for .NET 2 |
Add-in |
Free or free version available |
Source code provided |
Home PageCategories: Languages
Latest version: 1.0.20411
Added 2008-04-24
Programming system that is an attempt at a more cost effective way to develop and maintain high-quality software.
The Spec# system consists of:
- The Spec# programming language: an extension of C#. It extends the type system to include non-null types and checked exceptions. It provides method contracts in the form of pre- and postconditions as well as object invariants.
- The Spec# compiler. Integrated into Visual Studio, the compiler statically enforces non-null types, emits run-time checks for method contracts and invariants, and records the contracts as metadata for consumption by downstream tools.
- The Spec# static program verifier. Codenamed Boogie, this tool generates logical verification conditions from a Spec# program. Internally, it uses an automatic theorem prover that analyzes the verification conditions to prove the correctness of the program or find errors in it.
A unique feature of the Spec# programming system is its guarantee of maintaining invariants in object-oriented programs in the presence of callbacks, threads, and inter-object relationships.
The Spec# programming system is being developed as a research project at Microsoft Research.
Supports VS 2008 and 2005.
Built for .NET 2 |
Add-in |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: IDEs - IDE add-ins
Spell checker for HTML, ASP.NET, JScript, VB, C#, CSS and C++ for Visual Studio 2005 and 2008.
Supports text verification in:
- HTML style comments <-- HTML -->
- ASP.NET server side comments: <%-- ASP.NET --%>
- JScript, C# and C++ comments: // C++ style comments
- CSS and C style comments: /* C style comments */
- VB and VBScript style comments: 'This is VB comment
Spell checking is supported in style and script blocks as well as in JS, CS, VB, CSS, CPP and H files.
Requirements: Visual Studio 2008 or 2005, any edition except Express; Microsoft Word 2003 or 2007.
Built for .NET 2 |
Add-in |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Reporting
Latest version: Service Pack 1
Added 2004-02-03Updated 2004-06-23
Server-based reporting solution that can author, manage, and deliver both paper-oriented and interactive, Web–based reports.
Built for .NET |
Add-in |
Home PageCategories: Miscellaneous
Latest version: 1.0
Added 2009-07-28
Experimental enhanced version of .NET Framework 4 Beta 1 that enables software transactional memory for C# programmers.
Transactional memory is a technology that frees developers from worrying about the mechanics of fine-grained locking and synchronization in multi-threaded applications by providing transactional semantics for reading and writing to memory. It enables developers to focus on application logic instead of the details of memory I/O when building multi-core and many-core programs.
STM.NET makes it easy to declare a region of code as atomic. Simply write a function or lambda containing the code that you'd like to transact and pass it to the Atomic.Do delegate. Just like SQL code in a database transaction, this block of code will run as if isolated from other transacted blocks and either it completes successfully or rolls back the complete transaction if there is an error, all without you having to explicitly lock anything.
Features include:
- integration with System.Transactions so you can coordinate your atomic memory operations with existing transactional resource managers like MSMQ
- integration with Visual Studio 2008: works with Visual Studio's debugger to allow you to see the values of transacted variables as they appear while running inside the Atomic.Do delegate as well as their values as they appear outside.
Built for .NET 2 |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Testing
Latest version: 0.12.40430.3
Added 2009-05-16
Lightweight stub framework solely based on delegates, type safe, refactorable and fully source code generated.
Stubs was designed to support the Code Contracts runtime writter and provide a minimal overhead to the Pex white box analysis.
Features include:
- Delegate based
- Source code generated: No dynamic code, no Reflection Emit, no expression trees, just good old plain C#
- Type safe: No magic strings, all stubs are type safe and refactorable
- Lightweight: With the stubs, the overhead of calling a stubbed method is one virtual call
- Debugging support: You can step through, in and out of stubbed members
- Pex and Code Contracts friendly
- Non-sealed Classes and Virtual Methods
- Visual Studio integration
Built for .NET 2 |
Add-in |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Code analysis - Standards verifiers
Latest version: 4.4
Added 2008-05-23Updated 2010-07-26
StyleCop, also known as Source Analysis, analyzes C# source code to enforce a set of best practice style and consistency rules.
Source Analysis is similar in many ways to FxCop, but FxCop performs its analysis on compiled binaries, while Source Analysis analyzes the source code directly. For this reason, FxCop focuses more on the design of the code, while Source Analysis focuses on layout, readability and documentation. Most of that information is stripped away during the compilation process, and thus cannot be analyzed by FxCop.
Source Analysis comes with a set of default rules analyzers covering approximately 200 best practice rules. These rules are full compatible with the default layout settings in Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008.
Specifically, these rules cover the following, in no particular order:
- Layout of elements, statements, expressions, and query clauses
- Placement of curly brackets, parenthesis, square brackets, etc
- Spacing around keywords and operator symbols
- Line spacing
- Placement of method parameters within method declarations or method calls
- Standard ordering of elements within a class
- Formatting of documentation within element headers and file headers
- Naming of elements, fields and variables
- Use of the built-in types
- Use of access modifiers
- Allowed contents of files
- Debugging text
After installation, Source Analysis can be run from within the Visual Studio IDE, and can also be integrated into MSBuild-based command line builds.
Built for .NET 2 |
Built for .NET 4 |
Add-in |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Code analysis - Standards verifiers, Object browsing - Assembly viewers,
Latest version: 0.1
Added 2008-08-13
Suite of tools primarily aimed at validating the architecture of a framework.
Included tools:
- Deps: produces dependency diagrams between assemblies, based both on implementation, as well as API-only. It also carries out cycle detection analysis. The tool additionally outputs some general-interest statistics (e.g. number of types, number of members, etc).
- Layering: verifies that a layering and grouping diagram is indeed satisfied by a set of assemblies.
- PotentialCallers: lists all the methods that call, directly or indirectly, a set of methods.
Built for .NET 2 |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Inversion of Control
Latest version: 1.1
Added 2008-02-15Updated 2008-09-16
The Unity Application Block (Unity) is a lightweight extensible dependency injection container with support for constructor, property, and method call injection.
Built for .NET 2 |
Library |
Free or free version available |
Source code provided |
Home PageCategories: MVC
Latest version: 2.0
Added 2003-06-30Updated 2004-04-15
Framework for developing user interface processes. It is designed to abstract the control flow and state management out of the user interface layer into a user interface process layer.
Built for .NET |
Library |
Free or free version available |
Source code provided |
Home PageCategories: Builds
Command line utility that enables you to build Visual Studio .NET 2003 solutions that contain Visual C++ projects, as well as stand-alone Visual C++ projects. This is a light weight alternative to the /build switch of DEVENV.EXE. This is ideal for build lab machines and developers who want to build Visual C++ projects from the command line as well as from within the VS.NET 2003 IDE. VCBuild does not require any registration of its libraries to work.
Built for .NET |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Caching
Latest version: Community Technology Preview 1
Added 2008-06-05
Distributed in-memory application cache
Velocity (code name) can be used to cache any CLR object and provides access through APIs. The primary goals for "Velocity" are performance, scalability and availability.
Features include:
- Support for different cache types: Partitioned Cache, Local Cache
- Support for different client types: Simple client, Routing Client
- Deployment topology: Cache Service
- Concurrency models: Optimistic, Pessimistic
- Expiration by TTL and eviction using LRU
- Load balancing and dynamic scaling
- ASP.NET integration
- Key-based access
- Tag-based access
Built for .NET 2 |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Miscellaneous
Latest version: 1.0
Added 2004-07-03
Class library with over 225 Visual FoxPro functions for use with any .NET language.
The included VFPToolkitNET.DLL is a .NET managed code DLL (not a COM wrapper) and does not require Visual FoxPro. The functions supported execute fast since they are all written in .NET and compiled into a managed code .NET DLL. Included is a reference and tutorial stand-alone CHM help file as well as Visual Studio .NET integrated dynamic help using the same CHM help file. Full IntelliSense and Dynamic Help is enabled for the VFP functions when programming in any .NET language. Using the VFP Toolkit or .NET, most Visual FoxPro functions become available in VB.NET or any other .NET language. Functions like STRTOFILE() convert a string to a file in only one line of code.
Built for .NET |
Library |
Free or free version available |
Source code provided |
Home PageCategories: Code versioning - Source control
Latest version: 2005
Added 2003-05-20
Solution for developers who want a way to manage changes to their source code.
Visual SourceSafe is available packaged with Visual Studio or separately.
Features include:
- Visual Studio integration
- Unicode and XML support
- Remote access over HTTP
- Backwards compatibility
- 4GB capacity
- Migration path to Team Foundation Server
Built for .NET |
Built for .NET 2 |
Add-in |
Home PageCategories: IDEs - IDE add-ins
Latest version: 2010
Added 2003-05-20Updated 2010-04-13
Microsoft's IDE for developing .NET applications.
Includes support for ASP.NET (Web applications and Web services), Windows Forms, WPF, Silverlight, Windows services, Console applications, Mobile applications and more.
Comes with support for the following languages: C#, VB.NET, F#, J#, C++, Managed C++ and C++/CLI.
Visual Studio 2010 is available in several editions, including Express, Professional, Premium and Ultimate.
Built for .NET |
Built for .NET 2 |
Built for .NET 4 |
Built for the Compact Framework |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Documentation - Code commenting
Latest version: 2003
Added 2003-05-20Updated 2003-06-07
Set of documentation and tools for software developers and Help authors who wish to extend the help content in Visual Studio .NET.
Built for .NET |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: IDEs - IDE add-ins
Latest version: 7.0
Added 2003-06-09
This server explorer add-in allows you to build Active Directory queries.
Built for .NET |
Add-in |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: SVG - XAML - WPF - Silverlight, Web Services - Remoting - WCF,
Latest version: November 2006 CTP
Added 2006-01-20Updated 2006-11-07
Provides developers with support for building .NET Framework 3.0 applications using the released version of Visual Studio 2005.
These tools are provided as an early preview of technology being considered for the Orcas release of Visual Studio. These tools are not supported by Microsoft but provided as is to enable early adoption of the .NET Framework 3.0 platform. Users will be expected to upgrade to the Visual Studio Orcas release when that becomes commercially available.
This release includes XAML Intellisense support through schema extensions for the editor, project templates for the Windows Presentation Foundation and the Windows Communication Foundation, and .NET Framework 3.0 SDK documentation integration. This release contains a preview of the Visual Designer for Windows Presentation Foundation (code name "Cider"). This release does not include a graphical design surface for the Windows Communication Foundation.
Built for .NET 2 |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: IDEs - IDE add-ins
Latest version: 1.0
Added 2006-10-31
set of Visual Studio extensions provides tools to effectively use Visual Studio resources.
Set of Visual Studio extensions that includes:
- Source Code Outliner: provides a tree view of your source code's types and members and lets you quickly navigate to them inside the editor.
- Visual C++ Code Snippets: lets you insert snippets in your code by using a pop-up menu that contains programming keywords. VB.NET and C# languages have this functionality in Visual Studio 2005.
- Indexed Find: uses the Microsoft Indexing Service to provide improved search capabilities to the IDE. It sends the results of a search to the Output Window.
- Super Diff Utility: compares text files. It uses color coding and graphics to show the difference between the files in deleted text (red), changed text (blue), inserted text (green).
- Event Toaster Utility: notifies users about specific events within the Visual Studio IDE.
Built for .NET 2 |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: ASP.NET, Builds,
Latest version: Beta
Added 2005-11-16
Provides additional functionality for building and deploying Web site applications that you create in ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005.
This add-in includes a tool that enables you to merge the assemblies created during ASP.NET 2.0 precompilation, and it provides an UI within Visual Studio 2005 for managing build configurations, merging, and pre-build and post-build tasks using MSBuild.
A Web Deployment Project creates and maintains an MSBuild project file, and is associated in a solution with a Web site project. A Web Deployment Project enables you to manage not only build configuration and merge options, but other tasks such as specifying changes for the application's Web.config file during compilation, changing connection strings, creating virtual directories, and performing other tasks at specific points in the deployment process.
Built for .NET |
Built for .NET 2 |
Add-in |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: IDEs - IDE add-ins
Latest version: 2010
Added 2006-03-16Updated 2010-04-23
Provides tools and templates for building Visual Studio extensions.
By using the Visual Studio 2010 SDK, you can build your own tool windows, create menu commands, and add extensions to the new Visual Studio editor and other features.
The Visual Studio 2010 SDK includes project templates that help developers create tool windows, menu commands, isolated shell projects, and editor extensions. The editor extensions include text adornments, colorizers, and margins.
The Visual Studio 2010 SDK also includes build tasks that help developers build and debug extensions. Building and debugging are managed in a second instance of Visual Studio named the experimental instance. The experimental instance provides a test bed for extensions without changing the primary installation of Visual Studio.
The SDK also puts shortcuts to online documentation, samples, and other developer resources on the Start menu.
Built for .NET |
Built for .NET 2 |
Built for .NET 4 |
Add-in |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Code versioning - Source control
Latest version: 1.0
Added 2006-04-11
Enables integrated use of Team Foundation Version Control with products that don't support Team Explorer integration, such as:
- Visual Studio .NET 2003
- Visual C++ 6 SP6
- Visual Visual Basic 6 SP6
- Visual FoxPro 9 SP1
- Microsoft Access 2003 SP2
- SQL Server Management Studio
Built for .NET |
Add-in |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: IDEs - IDE add-ins
Latest version: 2005 Second Edition
Added 2003-11-25Updated 2006-12-08
Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition or VSTO 2005 SE for short) is a free add-on to Visual Studio 2005 that empowers developers to build applications targeting the 2007 Office system. Developers can now harness the benefits of the 2007 Office system platform and create Office-based solutions using Visual Studio 2005.
Features include:
- Application-level add-in support for the most popular 2007 Office System applications including Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, InfoPath, and Visio, and provides safe loading/unloading and easy management of managed add-ins.
- Design-time and runtime support for key 2007 Office System features such as the Ribbon, Custom Task Panes, and Outlook forms regions.
- Design-time support for InfoPath 2007 form templates.
- Maintainability and compatibility assurances. VSTO 2005 SE ensures that the applications customers have built on Office 2003 with VSTO 2005 continue to run with 2007 Office system.
- The ability to run in Visual Studio 2005 Professional, in addition to those Visual Studio versions already supported, including all of the MSDN subscriptions and Visual Studio Team System family of products.
- Expanded application-level add-in support for these Office 2003 Standard and Professional applications: Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Visio.
Built for .NET 2 |
Add-in |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: ASP.NET
Latest version: 2.0 - February 2008
Added 2007-01-09Updated 2008-02-29
The Web Client Software Factory (WCSF) provides architecture guidance to help customers build Composite Web Clients using ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, Workflow Foundation, etc.
In the box:
- Reference Implementations (complete sample applications using the Factory)
- Architecture guidance and patterns
- Scenario documentation
- How-to topics
- Recipes and Templates (Visual Studio 2005 extensions for automating common tasks)
- Designers
- Application Blocks and Libraries
- Training content (Hands-On-Labs, demos, etc)
Built for .NET 2 |
Add-in |
Free or free version available |
Source code provided |
Home PageCategories: Web Services - Remoting - WCF
Latest version: 3.0
Added 2004-05-25Updated 2005-06-08
Add-on to Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework that enables developers to build secure Web services based on the latest Web services protocol specifications.
Built for .NET |
Built for .NET 2 |
Add-in |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Interoperability
Latest version: 1.0
Added 2009-10-08
Provides a source code library that can be used to access some new Windows 7 features from managed code.
These Windows features are not available to developers today in the .NET Framework. It also provides access to some features of older versions of Windows operating systems.
Features include:
- Windows 7 Taskbar Jump Lists, Icon Overlay, Progress Bar, Tabbed Thumbnails, and Thumbnail Toolbars
- Windows 7 Libraries, Known Folders, non-file system containers
- Windows Shell Search API support, a hierarchy of Shell Namespace entities, and Drag and Drop functionality for Shell Objects
- Explorer Browser Control
- Shell property system
- Windows Vista and Windows 7 Common File Dialogs, including custom controls
- Windows Vista and Windows 7 Task Dialogs
- Direct3D 11.0, Direct3D 10.1/10.0, DXGI 1.0/1.1, Direct2D 1.0, DirectWrite, Windows Imaging Component (WIC) APIs
- Sensor Platform APIs
- Extended Linguistic Services APIs
- Power Management APIs; Application Restart and Recovery APIs
- Network List Manager APIs
- Command Link control and System defined Shell icons.
- Shell Search API support
Built for .NET 2 |
Library |
Free or free version available |
Source code provided |
Home PageCategories: Miscellaneous
Latest version: 1.0 (April 2010)
Added 2010-04-23
Component of the Windows Azure Platformt that includes two services: AppFabric Access Control and AppFabric Service Bus.
This SDK includes API libraries and samples for building connected applications with the .NET platform. It spans the entire spectrum of today’s Internet applications – from rich connected applications with advanced connectivity requirements to Web-style applications that use simple protocols such as HTTP to communicate with the broadest possible range of clients.
Built for .NET 2 |
Library |
Home PageCategories: Miscellaneous
Latest version: 1.1 (February 2010)
Added 2010-04-23
The Windows Azure SDK provides developers with the APIs, tools, documentation, and samples needed to develop, deploy, and manage applications and services that run on Windows Azure.
Built for .NET 2 |
Home PageCategories: IDEs - IDE add-ins
Latest version: 1.2 (June 2010)
Added 2010-04-23Updated 2010-06-09
Extends Visual Studio to enable the creation, configuration, building, debugging, running and packaging of scalable web applications and services on Windows Azure.
Installation includes the Windows Azure SDK.
Features include:
- C# and VB Project creation support for creating a Windows Azure Cloud Service solution with multiple roles
- Tools to add and remove roles from the Cloud Service
- Tools to configure each Role
- Integrated local development via the Development Fabric and Development Storage services
- Running and Debugging a Cloud Service in the Development Fabric
- Browsing cloud storage through the Server Explorer
- Building and packaging of Cloud Service Packages
- Deploying to the Windows Azure
- Monitoring the state of your services through the Server Explorer
- Debugging in the cloud by retrieving IntelliTrace logs through the Server Explorer
- Support for VS 2008 and 2010
Built for .NET 2 |
Built for .NET 4 |
Add-in |
Home PageCategories: IDEs - IDE add-ins
Latest version: 1.0 CTP - April 2010 Refresh
Added 2010-05-04
IDE and development tools for Windows Phone 7.
The Windows Phone Developer Tools includes:
- Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone
- Windows Phone Emulator
- Silverlight for Windows Phone
- XNA Game Studio 4.0
Built for Silverlight |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: SVG - XAML - WPF - Silverlight
Latest version: 2008-09-25
Added 2008-11-06
Suite of performance profiling tools that allow you to analyze the run-time behavior of your WPF application and point to potential performance bottlenecks.
This suite of tools includes the following:
- Perforator: for analyzing rendering behavior.
- Visual Profiler: for profiling the use of WPF services, such as layout and event handling, by elements in the visual tree.
- Working Set Analyzer: for analyzing the working set characteristics of your application.
- Event Trace: for analyzing events and generating event log files.
- ETW Trace Viewer: Record, display, and browse Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) log files in a WPF user-interface format.
A 64-bit version is available.
Built for .NET 2 |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Frameworks
Latest version: 3.0
Added 2006-12-12Updated 2008-12-08
XNA Framework run-time libraries developers can include with their product for redistribution on Windows XP and Windows Vista.
The XNA Framework Redistributable provides the necessary runtime components to execute a game on Windows that was developed using Microsoft XNA Game Studio 3.0.
Built for .NET 2 |
Library |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Frameworks, IDEs - IDE add-ins,
Latest version: 3.0
Added 2008-12-08
Toolset and cross-platform gaming libraries based on the .NET Framework for creating video games for Windows-based PCs, the Zune digital media player, and the Xbox 360 console.
XNA Game Studio is required to create games for Xbox LIVE Community Games.
Features include:
- Visual Studio 2008 integration: Support for C# 3.0, LINQ and most versions of VS 2008.
- Try Before You Buy: Allow your customers to try your game before they buy it.
- Invite Friends: Developers can allow players to invite friends to join their game.
- 1-click installation of Windows games.
- Highly compressed distribution of games.
Built for .NET 2 |
Free or free version available |
Home PageCategories: Frameworks, IDEs - IDE add-ins,
Latest version: 1.0 Refresh
Added 2006-12-12
Toolset and technology for creating video games for Windows-based PCs and the Xbox 360 console.
Combined with an active membership in the XNA Creators Club (available from Xbox Live Marketplace), you can also create, debug, and play games on your Xbox 360 console.
XNA Game Studio Express is based on Visual C# Express 2005. It contains the following:
- The XNA Framework, a set of managed code development libraries for creating games for Windows and the Xbox 360.
- The XNA Framework Content Pipeline, a set of tools that allow incorporating 3D content into their games.
- A set of documentation, how-tos, and starter kits that demonstrate how to use the content pipeline and XNA Framework.
Built for .NET 2 |
Free or free version available |
|
Help the .NET community get a consensus on great tools. Display your favorite tools on your own website or on your blog.
Keep track of your favorite tools. Build your personal watch list.
|