Web Essentials 2012

Free

Adds many useful features to Visual Studio for web developers.

(148) Review
Visual Studio
"12", 2012
Download (429,409)
5/5/2013
2.7
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Reviews (148)
Q and A (246)
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by Joshua.Rocha | December 07 2012

Is there a way to make a squiggly line go away without changing my code? I understand that there are more vendor prefixes I could use, but if my project is only supporting webkit, I would REALLY like to make that squiggly line go away. Please, please, PLEASE put an option to ignore or even an option to disable "alert for vendor prefixes" in the future.

I firmly believe that any squiggly line that comes up in anything should be able to be removed after user consideration. I know this is a great extension, but just like Microsoft Word doesn't always have better grammar than I do, this extension should take my input.

Thank you for the phenomenal extension and all your hard work!! :)

Mads Kristensen December 23 2012
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In version 2.2 you can select which browsers to support and the CSS editor will adjust accordingly with the correct validation and auto-generated vendor specifics. Just right-click in the CSS editor to open the browser selector

by Paul Mason | December 07 2012

Very impressive :)

There seems to be an issue in the Zen Coding support with lists containing sibling elements. e.g. div>ul>li*5>span+div only adds the nested div to the first li, and not the other 4. Nesting the sibling elements in a container div doesn’t work either (div>ul>li*5>div>span+div).

by Kenneth Scott | December 07 2012

Fantastic!

by subkamran | December 06 2012

I would give this 5 stars, but as an licensed Mindscape user, I think I will need to disable WE 2012. The reason is, while I can disable compiling and previewing LESS from WE, it still messes with the syntax highlighting and parsing of the LESS files (since that's what Mindscape does).

Mads, I would give you 10 stars if you could either a) detect Mindscape and prompt/automatically disable LESS handling or b) allow me to fully disable LESS handling in WE options.

It should be noted also, I work on a team, so it would also be nice to save a local set of WE settings or something (which is why I mentioned automatically disabling LESS handling).

Mads Kristensen December 06 2012
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Unfortunately, I can't turn off LESS editor support dynamically. We (the ASP.NET team) is shipping the LESS editor officially early 2013. That can't be turned off either. Is there a reason you prefer Mindscape's LESS editor over Web Essentials'?

I've just released new LESS editor component in the nightly build. Try it here: http://madskristensen.net/post/Web-Essentials-nightly-builds.aspx

Local WE settings are supported and so are solution based settings. That was introduced in version 1.9

by UnnDunn | December 06 2012

There aren't enough stars on this site to give a high enough rating for this plugin. If you are a front-end web developer, this should be the FIRST extension you install for Visual Studio 2012.

by Suresh Babu | December 06 2012

Must have for web dev.

by Davide Mencarelli | December 05 2012

by selap | December 03 2012

LESS editing is awesome. Thank you so much.

by Rhysling1 | December 03 2012

The only downside of moving from VS2010 to 2012 was the lack of Web Essentials. Thank you, Mads!!

by Andreas Schulz | December 02 2012

Hi Mads,

that's great... congrats!

by jtlowe | November 30 2012

So far, Web Essentials has been a very useful and productive tool. It makes VS that much better, and I'm surprised half of the functionality isn't already integrated into the core VS application. I like the flexibility of the plugin though and quick responses to bugs and features.

by WBrianG | November 30 2012

This is the most useful, well-maintained Visual Studio plugin I have ever used.

by maverick_rules | November 29 2012

This extension is really, really well done! Particularly like the extensive configuration options which allows me to combine this tool in my IDE with a build-time compiler/minifier like Cassette.

by WorkAByte | November 29 2012

by AaronLewis_GP | November 29 2012

Wouldn't code without it!

by Jarrett Vance | November 29 2012

Makes visual studio crash often when working with less files.

Mads Kristensen November 29 2012
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Delete

This is fixed in version 1.9.2. I hope you'll give it another try

by Kristian Thrane | November 28 2012

This is simply a fantastic tool!

by Tomekole | November 28 2012

Awesome extension! Thanks!

by JM_MSDN | November 27 2012

This is absolutely, hands-down, the BEST Visual Studio extension for web development. The only thing more amazing than this extension is the rate at which Mads pushes out new features and bug fixes!

by NateClark | November 27 2012

Very, very useful. Thanks!

61 - 80 of 148 Items   
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  • @importing several files fails (thread bombs)
    2 Posts | Last Post Mon 11:26 PM
    • I have a couple of .less files that do no more than facilitate the inclusion of smaller less files -- such as a responsive grid LESS file that sets up media queries and then imports each break, in a total of 6 @import calls (one for grid setup, one for design, for Desktop | Mobile | Tablet). 
      
      When I try to save these files I notice a cscript.exe thread getting up to about 2GB of RAM and then breaking. Is there anyway I can debug this extension to give a better understanding of where this breaks? I get an empty error that simply states 'LESS: '
    • I'm a dummy. The issue I was having was from not using @import-once. I believe @import-once is removed in the latest version of LESS so that's probably why I decided to remove them from my code.
  • @import of files outside current project fails with 404
    12 Posts | Last Post Mon 10:32 PM
    • Hi!
      
      Just upgraded from 2.5.1 to 2.6, and all our cross-project imports stopped working. Like this:
      
      @import "../../../../Themes/MiP.Theme/Styles/mip-mixins.less";
      
      This worked before but now gives the following compiler error:
      LESS: Couldn't load themes/MiP.Theme/Styles/mip-mixins.less (404)
      
      Can you fix this please? :) Or tell us what we're doing wrong. Or provide some kind of workaround. We are not very keen on duplicating all our less files... :)
      
    • Has this been addressed, or is there a workaround?
    • Same problem here.
    • The interesting thing is that LESS is supposed to be handled by Web Tools now since 2.5. Reverting back to the 2.5.1 download from http://vswebessentials.com/changelog fixed my problem. I imagine both Web Tools and Web Essentials have some conflicting dependency for path resolution. 
    • Reverted to 2.5.1 also and all seems well... for now.  Just wish I knew if this is a bug in 2.6 or an intentional change.
    • I am seeing this issue in 2.6 inside of the same project - rolling back to 2.5.1 has not resolved the issue.  Think there may be a remnant lurking somewhere after the uninstall.
    • 3 cycles of uninstall and reinstall later - 2.5.1 now functioning as expected.
    • See this thread for the description of the issue and for a possible workaround: http://forums.asp.net/p/1900852/5371528.aspx/1?p=True&t=635022256782196589
    • Alternatively you can just downgrade the less compiler from v1.3.3 to v1.3.1 which fixes the issue. See here:
      
      http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15691713/less-compiler-and-relative-import-references-not-working-in-web-essentials-2012
    • The "Replace with original 1.3.0" workaround here http://forums.asp.net/p/1900852/5371528.aspx/1?ASP+NET+and+Web+Tools+2012+2+bug+in+resolving+imports+in+LESS+files+workaround+included worked for me.
      
      It looks like the problem is really with Web Tools. I imagine that Web Tools or Web Essentials or both fiddles with the scripts in that directory so reveting to 2.5 reverts the 1.3.3 script to 1.3.0
    • This bug remains in Web Essentials 2.7 as the LESS version is still 1.3.3 and has not been reverted (though the script file name is less-1.3.0.js).
    • Reverting to v1.3.0 in Web Essentials 2.7 doesn't work for me. Instead, it just keeps creating threads that go to compile the LESS but just consume memory.
  • JSDoc and IntelliSense
    2 Posts | Last Post Sun 4:09 PM
    • Is there some magic setting to get JSDoc comments to be parsed for IntelliSense?  I can't seem to get this working in 1.7.  I have a simple test file with the following:
      
      /**
       * Does something.
       * 
       * @param {string} myParam
       */
      function doSomething(myParam) {
      
      }
      
      Inside the function, myParam seems to have no type information.  Outside, inline documentation just spits out the whole unformatted comment block for doSomething.  Anyone have any ideas how to get this to work?  Thanks!
    • I am having the exact same problem.  JSDOC does *NOT* work as described.  Am I missing something?  I am using the exact same format as dornif:
      
      /**
       * Does something.
       * 
       * @param {string} myParam
       */
      function doSomething(myParam) {
      
      }
      
      But when attempting to use 'doSomething', Intellisense just dumps out the entire comment block (/* ... */) above the function instead of providing the intellisense I expect for each parameter.
  • Compile Jade to Html
    1 Posts | Last Post May 11, 2013
    • Jade is a really nice alternative to typing Html manually. The best Jade engine is in node, but to get to use it for non-node apps aswell using it as a pre-processor would be a nice alternative. WebStorm already does this http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15492624/auto-compile-jade-in-webstorm-on-windows 
  • SCSS/SASS support?
    2 Posts | Last Post May 06, 2013
    • Hello , 
      
      Do you plan on bringing a SCSS/SASS support any time soon ? there is another plugin for that , but it doesn't feel as polished as yours and it brings a ton of other features that i don't really need.
      
      Thanks!
    • I would like to echo the sentiments of Aviatrix. I use the "other" plug-in and it doesn't feel as polished as this (and I pay for it). I don't like LESS as much as SCSS (a.k.a. SASS) and that other plug-in is the only one of it's kind to work with visual studio.
  • css files not showing nested under less file.
    1 Posts | Last Post April 28, 2013
    • I have WE 2.6 installed on my work and home PC's, both with VS 2012.2. The css files show linked under the less file on my home PC, but not on my work PC. Both MVC 4.0 apps. Is there a setting I'm missing?
  • Rename page codebehind bug
    2 Posts | Last Post April 28, 2013
    • I have noticed that when I rename an aspx file, the code behind drops the .aspx part and visual studio does not nest the file. Through trial and error I managed to find out that it is Web Essentials 2012 that is causing the issue and with the Plugin disabled it doesn't occur.
    • I can confirm the bug and it's REALLY annoying one :(
  • CSS bundle crash VS2012
    1 Posts | Last Post April 25, 2013
    • Hi,
      
      Making a CSS bundle crashes VS2012 if one of the CSS files do NOT belong to the project.  On a whim, I added the CSS to the project and the error no longer occurred.
      
      Trace...
      System.NullReferenceException was unhandled
        HResult=-2147467261
        Message=Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
        Source=WebEssentials2012
        StackTrace:
             at MadsKristensen.EditorExtensions.FileHelpers.RelativePath(String absPath, String relTo)
             at MadsKristensen.EditorExtensions.BundleFilesMenu.WriteFile(String filePath, IEnumerable`1 files, String extension, String output)
             at MadsKristensen.EditorExtensions.BundleFilesMenu.<>c__DisplayClasse.<CreateBundlefile>b__a()
             at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.InternalRealCall(Delegate callback, Object args, Int32 numArgs)
             at MS.Internal.Threading.ExceptionFilterHelper.TryCatchWhen(Object source, Delegate method, Object args, Int32 numArgs, Delegate catchHandler)
             at System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherOperation.InvokeImpl()
             at System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherOperation.InvokeInSecurityContext(Object state)
             at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunInternal(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state, Boolean preserveSyncCtx)
             at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state, Boolean preserveSyncCtx)
             at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state)
             at System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherOperation.Invoke()
             at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.ProcessQueue()
             at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.WndProcHook(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, Boolean& handled)
             at MS.Win32.HwndWrapper.WndProc(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, Boolean& handled)
      
  • Build TS on save options crashes web essentials
    3 Posts | Last Post April 16, 2013
    • Hi,
      
      with build typescript on save checked, whenever I now build my project the output from web essentials (ver 2.6 vs2012) contains the following exceptions ;
      
      15/04/2013 15:54:01: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
         at MadsKristensen.EditorExtensions.ProjectHelpers.GetRootFolder()
         at MadsKristensen.EditorExtensions.ProjectHelpers.GetRootFolder()
      15/04/2013 15:54:01: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
         at MadsKristensen.EditorExtensions.ProjectHelpers.GetRootFolder()
         at MadsKristensen.EditorExtensions.ProjectHelpers.GetRootFolder()
      15/04/2013 15:54:01: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
         at MadsKristensen.EditorExtensions.ProjectHelpers.GetRootFolder()
         at MadsKristensen.EditorExtensions.ProjectHelpers.GetRootFolder()
      
      Any ideas, I've uninstalled and reinstalled without any success.
      
      Thanks,
    • sorry that should have been 'with compile on build' switched on, this is an mvc 4 application.
    • This seems to be related to out web project, which contains the typescript files, being contained in a solution folder. 
      
      remove it from the solution folder and place at the root of the solution, and it works fine.
      
      
  • Version 2.6 crashes VS2012
    1 Posts | Last Post April 16, 2013
    • Hi,
      
      we've just started using Web Essentials with VS2012 for a new project and thus also started building our CSS from the ground up using LESS.
      
      Unfortunately, we've then been scratching our heads as to why rebuilding our solution didn't also recompile all the LESS files even though exactly that was configured in the LESS options page.
      
      I then threw Reflector and another instance of VS2012 at it and found out that our web app being in a solution folder instead of the root of the solution was the culprit - could you perhaps add recursing into solution folders when looking for projects to compile?
      
      Also, while doing that I found that VS crashes with a "file not found" exception at LessProjectCompiler.MinifyFile when compiling the LESS files during building when the associated minified file is missing and minification is activated. I assume if the file doesn't exist it should just be created... :)
      
      (The reason for that was that we didn't want to check the generated files into our Subversion repository so after a fresh checkout those files will always be missing, and having to touch each of them once to have the minified files generated is iffy...)
      
      Hope this helps.
      
      Kind regards
      
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