Skip to main content

Microsoft Web Essentials: a must have Visual Studio Extension for every web developer

With the release of Visual Studio 2012, Microsoft also updated some of their Visual Studio extensions. One of the extensions I like a lot are the Web Essentials tools and although the live of a web developer becomes a lot easier in Visual Studio 2012, there are still some missing features. Web Essentials 2012 tries to fill this gap.

So what’s new in this version?

  • Option dialog: Now it becomes possible to set the most important options through this dialog.
  • JSHint for JavaScript: JSHint is a really good way of making sure your JavaScript follows certain coding guidelines and best practices.
  • Better LESS and CoffeeScript: The LESS editor has been updated to truly take advantage of LESS. This includes:
    • Support for @import directives
    • Intellisense across imported .less files for Mixins and variables
    • All the validation from the CSS editor now shows up in LESS
    • Both CoffeeScript and LESS now uses the official compilers
    • Compiles and creates a .css/.js file when a LESS/CoffeeScript file is saved in VS
  • JavaScript regions: I’m not big fan of regions, but if you are a believer; Javascript regions is now also a part of the 2012 version
  • Re-embed base64 dataURIs:  allows you to keep your base64 dataURI’s up-to-date with the original image file as it changes.
  • Vendor help for @-directives: Vendor specific validation and Smart Tags are now also available for @-directives.
  • New performance validation: Three new validators have been added that analyses the CSS for general performance issues. They validation the following:
    • Small images should be inlined (base64 embedded)
    • Don’t use the universal selector (the star)
    • Don’t over qualify ID selectors

Of course the list of new features, bug fixes,… is a lot longer, have a look at Mads Kristensen blog for all the info.

Popular posts from this blog

.NET 8–Keyed/Named Services

A feature that a lot of IoC container libraries support but that was missing in the default DI container provided by Microsoft is the support for Keyed or Named Services. This feature allows you to register the same type multiple times using different names, allowing you to resolve a specific instance based on the circumstances. Although there is some controversy if supporting this feature is a good idea or not, it certainly can be handy. To support this feature a new interface IKeyedServiceProvider got introduced in .NET 8 providing 2 new methods on our ServiceProvider instance: object? GetKeyedService(Type serviceType, object? serviceKey); object GetRequiredKeyedService(Type serviceType, object? serviceKey); To use it, we need to register our service using one of the new extension methods: Resolving the service can be done either through the FromKeyedServices attribute: or by injecting the IKeyedServiceProvider interface and calling the GetRequiredKeyedServic...

Azure DevOps/ GitHub emoji

I’m really bad at remembering emoji’s. So here is cheat sheet with all emoji’s that can be used in tools that support the github emoji markdown markup: All credits go to rcaviers who created this list.

Kubernetes–Limit your environmental impact

Reducing the carbon footprint and CO2 emission of our (cloud) workloads, is a responsibility of all of us. If you are running a Kubernetes cluster, have a look at Kube-Green . kube-green is a simple Kubernetes operator that automatically shuts down (some of) your pods when you don't need them. A single pod produces about 11 Kg CO2eq per year( here the calculation). Reason enough to give it a try! Installing kube-green in your cluster The easiest way to install the operator in your cluster is through kubectl. We first need to install a cert-manager: kubectl apply -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.14.5/cert-manager.yaml Remark: Wait a minute before you continue as it can take some time before the cert-manager is up & running inside your cluster. Now we can install the kube-green operator: kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kube-green/kube-green/releases/latest/download/kube-green.yaml Now in the namespace where we want t...