Language files Visual Studio Extension for EPiServer

As you certainly know, EPiServer localization is based on XML files with a certain structure. Working with translations in code is not hard, but I believe it could be even easier with a small extension, that I am going to introduce to you. This is a Visual Studio 2010 extension that has three main functions:

1. Show values of translation keys as a tool-tips.
2. Navigate to a line in a language file containing the key.
3. Copy to the clipboard an expression with path to the key selected in a language file.

In code editor all recognized translation keys are decorated with a thin border.  Tool-tips are shown if you hover a mouse pointer over a decorated translation key. Smart-tags used for navigation can be expanded with left mouse click or by pressing "Ctrl + ." key combination.

The extension can recognize two types of translation references: basic XPath “/admin/settings/heading” and resource binding <%$ Resources: EPiServer, admin.settings.heading %>. Relative paths like Translate(“#heading”) and filtering by attribute value expressions  like Translate(“/pagetypes/property[@name=’Description’]”) are not supported for now.

The extension can be installed from Extension Manager in Visual Studio 2010 (select Online gallery and type “EPiServer” in the search request) or alternatively it can be downloaded from this page.  The source code for the extension is available here.

This project was born during a series of hack-days that we have here in EPiServer development team and it is not an official EPiServer release. You are very welcome to leave feedback and suggestions here in comments or on extensions page. Bugs can be reported and tracked here.