Visual Studio Code Extensions for Web Developers

The efficiency and overall productivity of web developers are dependent on many factors, which is why developers appreciate extensions for a variety of reasons. VS Code is a popular IDE (Integrated Developer Environment) that is well-known in the web developer community and has taken center stage as one of the most loved IDEs in the industry.

It is also known for the number of extensions available in its marketplace. Developers can enhance their working environment with a variety of extensions for Visual Studio Code to increase efficiency and productivity.

You may browse and download more than 20,000 extensions from the VS Code store right from your program. We'll talk about a few extensions that site designers can look at. Let's quickly examine what extensions are, what they accomplish, and how they impact web developers' productivity.

Extensions are software packages that enhance an existing application's features or capabilities.

They can be integrated with various development tools and web browsers, which improves the developer experience and speeds up workflow. Languages, debuggers, formatting tools, and other additions to your development environment are a few examples of extensions.

There are numerous reasons why VS code extensions are crucial for improving web developers' workflows, some of which are as follows:

Productivity: There are extensions available to perform repetitive tasks and provide shortcuts to performing certain actions, which would then save time and energy.

Customization: Working in a visually appealing environment is another approach to boosting productivity. You can configure extensions to keep your working environment clean and well-organized.

Time-Saving: Some extensions can automate repetitive tasks such as debugging and testing, generating a boiler code, and formatting your code.

Collaboration: Collaboration is an integral part of web development, and extensions encourage collaboration between developers working on the same projects.

Integration: Extensions integrate with external tools and services, e.g., Git/GitHub, this helps developers increase their workflow efficiency.

Listed below are 18 Visual code extensions that will help you develop websites more efficiently;

• Prettier: Prettier is a code formatter that is aimed to make code easier to understand and manage. Once installed and set via VS Code extensions, it uses a uniform style to automatically format your code.

• Live server: Live server is an extension that is used to initiate the development of a local server with a live reload feature that detects changes made to the source code. It automatically updates those changes in your web view. Live server eliminates the process of manually refreshing the web page.

• CodeSnap: CodeSnap extension is available on the VS Code marketplace, and it allows users to capture and share screenshots of code. There are also other features available on CodeSnap which include; copying screenshots to a clipboard, showing line numbers, etc.

• Better Comments: Better comments extension for your code creates a readable format for making comments in VS Code. In addition to organizing comments, you can create annotations that can be identified by color coding them in different colors based on their importance i.e. highlights, alerts, queries, TODOs, etc. This allows you to create easy-to-read comments, increasing the efficiency of writing comments in your code.

• Git History: A Git history is a graphical representation of a repository's or file's history. This extension allows developers to see the changes made to a repository by capturing different versions and displaying commit details which include; the author, the commit message, the date and time when changes were made, etc. This is an efficient tool for developers who use git to manage their code.

• TabNine: TabNine is an AI auto completion extension that uses Machine Learning (ML) to provide code suggestions, code snippets, code prediction, and so on. The machine learning model analyzes your code pattern and structures and provides code completion based on all it’s learned. This extension was created to cut down coding time significantly.

• Bracket Colorizer: The bracket colorizer extension gives brackets and parenthesis a colored background. It gives the brackets or parentheses different colors, making it simpler to recognize a pair, especially in languages that require brackets or parenthesis or complex code with nested brackets or parenthesis. This extension is native to VS code currently; all you have to do is enable it in the settings.

• Auto Import: The auto import tool automatically organizes and inserts import lines for external modules or libraries into your applications. The auto-import add-on examines your code to find any necessary import statements. You can create shorter import statements and file paths thanks to the suggested and integrated import statements for your code.

• Live share: Live share extension allows developers to collaborate in real-time, this means that you and others can work on the same project, edit and debug in real-time. Live share supports audio and video calls and also supports a wide range of programming languages like Python, JavaScript, Typescript, and so on. This tool is incredibly effective and efficient for developers who want to collaborate on projects.

• ESLint: ESLint is a tool that helps developers discover errors in their code. It analyzes Jscript code to check for code quality and style issues, by highlighting errors or potential issues to help developers maintain a consistent formatting style and format. The auto-fix feature automatically fixes issues or common errors; you can customize this tool by specifying the rules to apply which would increase efficiency in your workflow.

• GitLens: GitLens is an open-source extension available in VS Code marketplace to help you understand code better by navigating and exploring git repositories. It allows you to revise the history of a file to understand changes made to it. Features of GitLens include; revision navigation, current line blame annotation at the end of a line showing the commit, the author who modified it, sidebar views; commit details view, repository view, file history view, lie history view, etc.

• Quokka: Quokka.js extension is referred to as a prototyping playground in your code editor. It enables real-time monitoring of the execution of their code. Features of quokka include; live feedback, live logging/compare (which is used for debugging, troubleshooting, and testing), debugger integration, multiple language support, customization, and so on.

• Code Time: Code Time is a programming metric and time-tracking extension that helps developers track their time spent on coding. The features of Code Time include; time tracking, metrics, and insights which include the amount of time spent in your code base, and the files you’re working on. By analyzing how often developers switch between tasks, productivity features provide insight into developers' workflows.

• Project Manager: Project manager extension helps developers manage and switch between projects irrespective of the file location. The project manager provides certain features, some include; organize projects using tags, a status bar to identify projects, auto-detect Git, Mercurial, or SVN Repositories, identifying renamed and deleted repositories, and customization.

• Turbo Console Log: Turbo console log is a tool that is used to automate console.log for debugging. The Turbo Console Log generates console.log statements automatically which means you do not have to type them out manually. When the extension is installed, all you need to do is select the text that needs to be printed out and apply the shortcut it will automatically generate the text that needs to be printed. There are other features i.e. multiple cursor support which allows you to print multiple values, and customizable output format that allows you to customize the output format of the console.log statement e.g. prefix, suffix, etc.

• Fluent Icon: The fluent icon extension changes the look of the Icons on your sidebar in the VS code editor. The extension contains a collection of icons that are consistent with the fluent design system for Microsoft products. Fluent Icon is customizable, which means that Icons can be customized according to your preference, it’s also very easy to use, and it’s updated regularly with new Icons so that you can access the latest Icons for your development environment.

• Auto Rename Tag: When you rename an HTML/XML tag it automatically renames the corresponding tag and vice versa. It’s also customizable meaning that you can customize it by giving it certain conditions to follow. This extension also supports nested tags, which cannot be avoided when writing code, making it a very useful tool for developers.

For web developers who are interested in productivity and efficiency, extensions are incredibly useful. Working with new technologies is easier with extensions as they provide shortcuts and tips for beginners. VS Code's marketplace is brimming with extensions, so there are more than enough options to get you started. The extensions listed above are popular in the web development community, and they are not hard to connect to VS Code, all you need to do is visit the VS Code marketplace, choose the extension that fits your needs, and install it.