Microsoft has produced a line of integrated development environment. One of their best products in this line is the visual studio. The software is mainly used for development of GUI i.e. graphical user interface applications and also some consoles. Visual studio has its usage for developing web sites and many web applications and services as well. Every Microsoft windows platform is capable of making use of this product and .NET framework also supports it.

The visual studio lets the user edit the code with the help of code editors. This code editor supports intelli-sense and code refactoring too. There is a debugger that is integrated and its main purpose is to debug at the source as well as at the machine level. Many GUI applications require form designers and visual studio has a provision for it as well. There are many designer schemes in-built with it. The functionality of the application can be improved drastically by adding numerous plug-ins. Different tools and toolsets are also present in the product. This makes it even more convenient to maintain the flexibility of the project that the user is working on.

There are large numbers of tools included in visual studio. All the tools are different in nature and carry out different tasks. Each one of them is vital and is required for some purpose or the other. Some of the most commonly used tools of visual studio are

Open Tabs Browser- This browser lets the user switch between all the open tabs. It maintains a list of the active tabs and is invoked by pressing CTRL+TAB.

Solution Explorer- It is important to maintain a record of all the files that are required to build an application correctly. These files need to be stored and displayed in a hierarchal manner. The prime purpose of the solution explorer is to conveniently mange the files present in the system and let the user browse through it.

Data Explorer- No application is useful until and unless there is some database attached to it. Also it is of utmost importance that these databases are preserved and maintained and managed properly. SQL server, a product from Microsoft, is used to create databases and data explorer manages these databases. The database tables can be created as well as updated, modified or deleted using this tool. Queries can also be created.

Server Explorer- SQL lets the user crate databases. One has to establish a connection between the application and databases to make it work. The server explorer manages all the connections between the databases and the applications that use them. However it is important that the computer is accessible. One more use of server explorer is that it can allow the user to browse active window services.

Properties Editor- This tool allows changing the properties or editing the properties in GUI pane. There is a list of all the available properties that can be changed.

Object Browser- This is basically a namespace and also a class library browser for .NET package from Microsoft. It is possible with the help of this tool to browse all the namespaces in an ordered pattern. It is not a compulsion that the hierarchy reflects the organization in the file system.

There are more than one versions of visual studio available in the market. Currently the most popular of them is the visual studio 2008. Apart from it, visual studio 2005 professional edition is also available. Also there are some language-specific editions that are usually used by companies and the experts. These editions include visual studio for C++, C# and J#. Microsoft is currently working on the development of visual studio 2010.