My developer toolbox

Here is a list of software tools (and one online service) that has become invaluable to me when developing, besides Visual Studio of course. ;-)

MGLine
This simple, but yet so great, program is a desktop ruler that easily lets you measure pixels on the screen. Great when working with css and webdesigns. I got this from a colleague when doing my gymnasium internship like ten years ago. Never found it on the web, so I decided to share it with you here: Download MGLine and unzip the file where you want the program on your computer and run the executable.

FireBug
I hope no one working with css and html has missed this extension for FireFox. If you have, get it now!

Tortoise-SVN and xp-dev.com
Tortoise-SVN is a windows client for the popular open source source control software Subversion. I use it to manage my subversion repositories hosted for free at xp-dev.com. They also have a good enough task handling system that I use in some projects (based on XP programming principles). Tortoise integrates with Windows Explorer.

AnkhSvn
Another open source client for Subversion, with the big difference that this one integrates into Visual Studio. Great stuff.

CodeRush Xpress
Totally invaluable extension to Visual Studio. Have not yet tried the 2010 edition but the features for 2008 certainly made my life easier and has saved me a ton of time. Make sure you check out the introductory video.

Reflector
Have a look at the code in any .net assembly, such as the .net framework itself. A bit tricky to navigate but good when you need to know whats actually going on inside controls and other framework classes.

SQL Search
Quite a new free tool from RedGate that extends SQL Server Management Studio with the ability to search on columnnames, tablenames etc within your database. It even searches within the text of your stored procedures and functions which can be quite handy when refactoring becomes inevitable.

WinMerge
Another great open source tool for comparing and merging files. This can also be used as the compare tool opened from Tortoise-SVN menu options.

FileZilla
A free ftp client where my favourite feature is “synchronized browsing”.

I think that’s about it, for now anyways. What tools do you use? Please share!