VS 2010 SP1 (Beta) and IIS Express

ScottGu has blogged on the VS 2010 SP1 (Beta) and IIS Express, see his article here
Basically Visual Studio 2010 SP1 adds support for IIS Express
IIS Express is a free version of IIS 7.5 that is optimized for developer scenarios:

• It’s lightweight and easy to install (less than 5Mb download and a quick install)
• It does not require an administrator account to run/debug applications from Visual Studio
• It enables a full web-server feature set – including SSL, URL Rewrite, and other IIS 7.x modules
• It supports and enables the same extensibility model and web.config file settings that IIS 7.x support
• It can be installed side-by-side with the full IIS web server as well as the ASP.NET Development Server (they do not conflict at all)
• It works on Windows XP and higher operating systems – giving you a full IIS 7.x developer feature-set on all Windows OS platforms

Check out ScottGu's blog and go for it.

Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Power Tools

You can check out the latest VS2010 Productivity Power tools on the visualstudiogallery portal.


I love the Solution Navigator, Searchable and Reference Dialog amongst the other gallery of extensions!