Note what happened with functions, statements and variables.

Folks are reaching outside their standard built-in tools and pulling inspiration from everywhere.

Its been said that (some) Microsoft developers dont like to use tools or technologies that arent built in to Visual Studio.

However, myself and others have been pushing the concept of LEGO blocks snapping together.

Rather than thinking of Visual Studio as a giant single block, consider it as a small block amongst many others.

Feel empowered to choose the technologies that work for you and discarding the ones that dont.

I talked about this LEGO analogy in my DevDays keynote in The Netherlands earlier in the year.

Snap in tools like the HTML5 Web Standards Update for Visual Studio, loggersprofilersdebuggers like Glimpse, MiniProfiler and ELMAH, Package Managers like NuGet and OpenWrap, all work together to make your development experience more enjoyable (and some new Visual Studio StylesThemes and a little fresh wallpaper never hurt either You can even make VS2010 look like 2008 if it make you happy ).

One of the most impressive (free) tools Ive seen lately is the Mindscape Web Workbench.

What CoffeeScript Sass Less What are these silly names and why should I care Well, remember when I blogged about fanciful names These are some names youll want to know about.

Heres a little about each and how Mindscape makes them fun for Visual Studio Developers.

CoffeeScript CoffeeScript is a little language that compiles into JavaScript.

Ive blogged a few times lately about how JavaScript is becoming not just THE ubiquitous language on the web, but also a valid target for high level languages to compile to.

Script compiles C to JavaScript, GWT compiles to JavaScript, ClojureScript compiles to JavaScript, etc.

However, each of these languages has semantics that require some significant mapping to JavaScript.

CoffeeScript uplevels JavaScript to make it more expressive and more idiomatic.

You know when youre explaining something and you cant think of a word Or perhaps you dont know the right word CoffeeScript adds those new words to JavaScript and you find yourself going, YES Thats what I meant to say For example, from their website, heres some CoffeeScript: Assignment: number 42 opposite true Conditions: number -42 if opposite.

Demos are nice, but the reality of CSS (much like that of JavaScript) is that it never quite reads like the fine poetry you were hoping for.

Remember that the reality is we cant change CSS and JavaScript, but we can change the Domain Specific Language that we write them in.

Then layer in defines, or perhaps just use C.you get the idea.

Up level your abstractions and favor the more expressive language.

A better, redesigned CSS that is still a super set of CSS itself.

You just use scoping and indenting rules you already know and you get cleaner CSS.

Because its more complex and a more dynamic translation, LESS actually runs on the client side and is supported by a client side JavaScript file called.

Visual Studio For Mac Less Compiler