Getting & Staying Current with Visual Studio 2010 for Web Developers

I don't know about you, but I find it kind of crazy at times figuring out if I have the latest of everything there is for the Visual Studio 2010 developer from Microsoft. (This does not include any third-party components, just recommended updates from Microsoft.) And the be honest, the msn.microsoft.com and asp.net sites are not that helpful in figuring this out.

In an effort to help, I have enumerated here what the latest VS 2010 setup should include, complete with download links. When you install everything here, you will be able to develop ASP.NET 4.0 Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC 3 applications and web sites in addition to the other stuff your version of Visual Studio supports (e.g., Silverlight, WPF, etc.). These downloads will also include NuGet and the Entity Framework 4.1, so there is no need to download this software separately.

1. Visual Studio 2010.
   First of all, you need to purchase and install Visual Studio 2010 itself. For the free Express version, you can download it from Visual Web Developer 2010 Express
   
   
2. Visual Studio Service Pack 1 (released Spring 2011).
   This is a must-have download that fixes a bunch of bugs and a number of enhancements too including preliminary support for HTML5 and CSS3. See #4 below for better support of these web technologies. Download and install from VS 2010 SP1 download page. You can find details on the features of the service pack here.
   
   
3. ASP.NET MVC3 Tools Update (released Spring 2011)
   If you are using ASP.NET MVC 3, then you should also download install this update for Visual Studio from ASP.NET MVC3 Tools Update download page. This update improves Visual Studio's support for MVC 3, including better scaffolding, NuGet, Entity Framework 4.1, and more. A good overview of the updates can be found in Phil Haack's blog post.
   
   
4. Entity Framework 4.1 (update released July 2011)
   Not in the original post but I realized that a project I created would not work on a co-worker's workstation until they had installed EF 4.1, not just the nuget package. Download from EF 4.1- Update 1 download page. This is the link to the update of the original EF 4.1 download that was released in the Spring of 2011.
   
   
5. Web Standards Update for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 SP1 (released June 2011)
   This is an update to VS 2010 SP1 that "brings VS 2010 intellisense & validation as close to W3C specification as we could get via means of an extension". Download and install from Web Standards Update download page. A good description of the changes can be found in the Visual Web Developer Team blog post.
   
   
6. Latest version of NuGet (currently--as of Oct 31, 2012--at version 2.1)
   Update to NuGet package manager is required for some packages. Download and install NuGet

Note: I don't control these download pages, so it is possible they will change. If so, I will do my best to update these links. Post last updated on October 31, 2012.