Multimedia / Development Tools & Software Utilities (Dev Tools & IT Utilities) / Microsoft (Tools & Add-ins, Controls & Components) - Top Downloads

In this area of our product catalog you will find programming tools and IT utilities that will help you with almost every aspect of software development. These software development tools will help you with: designing, coding, testing, deploying and maintaining your software application. As well as complete IDE tools, there are developer tools for version control and also software build tools to help you in reliably building new releases of your software. There are also documentation tools, issue tracking and help desk tools that allow you to cover almost every aspect of the Software Development Life-Cycle (SDLC).

It's not just developer tools! There are IT utilities for Systems Administrators, Network Administrators and Database Administrators (DB Admins) to use. For example, we have database tools, like database backup utilities to make sure you are backing up your MSFT SQL Server database reliably, db tools to speed up data maintenance tasks on MySQL databases and database utilities to compare data schemas in Oracle databases prior to live deployment. We have an extensive range of XML tools, to help you manage your XML based data files. There are application packaging and deployment tools to help you manage and distribute your software applications across your organization. There are SharePoint tools to help you monitor the Audit logs from your SharePoint server farm.

For technical writers, technical authors, business process & workflow creators and the developer who has turned into the accidental documenter at the end of the project, we have a wide selection of help authoring tools to help you create basic help files right through to full on-line published or Web based integrated software documentation and self-help systems for users. These range for basic help generators, through to sophisticated modern documentation tools that take a capture, document and share or collaborative approach to creation on-line documentation.

The Dev Tools & IT Utilities catalog is split into 3 main categories based on platform and compatibility: Windows, Linux and Unix. We have many more tools for Windows environments than we do for Linux & Unix and as such the Windows tools category is sub-divided into further categories based on product compatibility. In general for all the tools listed here you can: find, compare, download, review, try and buy the dev tools and IT utilities from our Web site. If you are interested in News about DevTools we also have many Tools News RSS feeds that you can subscribe to, to help keep you up to date with all the latest releases in your specific area of interest. So whether you are watching for the latest version of your favorite bestselling installation tool to be released or looking for a brand new DevTool to help with a new problem - you will find high quality, commercial grade software developer tools and IT utilities here to meet your needs.

The Microsoft software platform provides Microsoft developers with an array of Microsoft tools to create solutions for their customers and end users. The Microsoft applications that programmers develop can be created using the MS Visual Studio range of Microsoft development tools, including: MS Visual Basic; MS Visual C# (C-sharp); MS Visual C++ (C Plus Plus), as well as older MS dev languages and MS IDEs, such as MS Visual FoxPro. MS Visual Studio, the Microsoft .NET Framework and the more mature Microsoft COM platform can be extended to provide additional functionality to help MS developers create solutions faster. For example, there is a Microsoft add-in model that allows a Microsoft tool to be extended by other third-party companies, as long as they comply with the Microsoft addin model. As a result you can get a Microsoft extension for Visual Studio to refactor your Visual Basic code to make it easier to read or maintain and to speed up your coding by helping with code layout.  Many Visual Studio add-ins are available, including add ins to do C# code generation for you, giving you a faster way to create an application from scratch.

Microsoft Visual Studio software can also be extended beyond the Microsoft controls and Microsoft components that are supplied within the Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment (VS IDE) to give additional functionality. You can get Microsoft .NET components from companies that specialize in writing Internet communications components or eCommerce components that can be programmed like any other Microsoft component and save you a vast amount of time and money in programming your next Microsoft project. Or you can get an advanced Microsoft control for charting that enables you to draw many more styles of charts and graphs than are available inside the standard Microsoft controls in Visual Studio. These Microsoft components are available in many different forms as: Microsoft DLLs or as a Microsoft library, or as a Microsoft ActiveX or COM component supporting the COM object model or for the .NET Framework as Microsoft WinForms controls or ASP.NET controls, or as Microsoft WPF controls for Windows Presentation Foundation applications or as Silverlight controls for Microsoft Silverlight developers to use.

In this Microsoft marketplace you will find lots of different MS UI controls, as well as non-visual components, Microsoft utilities and Microsoft plug-ins to help you program in Microsoft Visual Basic, Visual C++ & Visual C#. You will also find Microsoft visual tools written by ISVs that can be used by MS Access developers or by MS Office programmers as Office components to be embedded inside their MS VBA or VSTO apps. There are also SharePoint tools and SharePoint Web Parts for MOSS bases apps being created by SharePoint developers. Plus for SQL Server you will find Microsoft utility products that allow you to access or bind to your data sources, compare data, manage your data, backup your data efficiently and much more. There are over 1,800 commercial products compatible with Microsoft software shown here in this Microsoft product gallery and many come with free downloads or free software trials for you to use listed in our Microsoft downloads product pages.