Top Productivity Power Tools for Visual Studio 2010 Every Developer Should Use

Hidden Features: Unlocking Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Power Tools

Overview

Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Power Tools is an extension pack that adds numerous small but impactful features to the IDE to streamline navigation, editing, and debugging. Many features are subtle yet significantly improve workflow once discovered.

Notable hidden/lesser-known features

• Quick Access to Document Well (Document Tab Well Enhancements): Allows vertical tabs, pinned tabs, tab grouping, and color-coding of tabs to quickly find open files in large projects.
• Solution Navigator: A richer browser than Solution Explorer — supports filtered searches, member-level navigation, and quick actions (go to definition, find references) for faster code discovery.
• Quick Find/Go To Definition Improvements: Enhanced inline search and more precise filtering reduce context switches compared with the default Find dialog.
• Ctrl+Click to Go To Definition: Click identifiers with Ctrl pressed to jump to their definitions without needing context menus or keyboard-only navigation.
• Automatic Brace Completion: Inserts matching closing braces/quotes automatically, reducing typing errors and speeding up coding.
• Structure Visualizer: Shows subtle vertical lines and tooltips to visualize code blocks and nesting, making it easier to navigate complex methods.
• Enhanced scrollable editor tab list: Scrolls tabs smoothly when many files are open; hovering shows previews to pick the correct file quickly.
• Middle-click closes tab: Close tabs using the mouse middle button, mirroring browser behavior for faster tab management.
• Find Results Window Enhancements: Allows double-clicking results to open files and automatically highlights matches with context; sometimes includes grouping by file.
• Copy as Html (Code Copy with Formatting): Copy selections as syntax-highlighted HTML for documentation or bug reports.

Productivity tips for using them

1. Enable only what you need: Open the Power Tools options and toggle features to avoid clutter or conflicts with other extensions.
2. Use Solution Navigator for exploration: When joining a new codebase, use member-level search to locate types/members quickly.
3. Pin and color-code important files: Keep frequently edited files pinned and color-coded in the Document Well.
4. Rely on Ctrl+Click and Structure Visualizer: Use these to move through code mentally and reduce reliance on Find dialogs.
5. Map or keep Middle-click habit: If you use multiple IDEs or browsers, middle-click to close tabs for consistency.

Compatibility & gotchas

• Some features can conflict with other extensions (e.g., ReSharper). If behavior seems off, disable overlapping features.
• Performance impact is minimal but noticeable in very large solutions—disable heavy features if VS becomes sluggish.
• Since VS2010 is older, modern versions of Visual Studio incorporate many of these features natively; consider upgrading if you need full support.

Quick setup checklist

• Install Productivity Power Tools for VS2010.
• Open Tools → Options → Productivity Power Tools and enable: Document Tab Well, Solution Navigator, Structure Visualizer, Automatic Brace Completion, Ctrl+Click Go To Definition.
• Restart Visual Studio.
• Pin/color-code two frequently used files and try Ctrl+Click navigation to validate behavior.

If you want, I can produce a one-page cheat sheet listing keyboard/mouse shortcuts and exact option names for each feature.