README.md

September 20, 2017 · View on GitHub

Direct copy of Istvan Novak's work at codeplex

LearnVSXNow: Take a dive with me under the surface of Visual Studio Extensibility!

I hope, you will find the information here useful. Please share your opinion and recommendations with me!

Recently published:

Part 44: “Hello World” of Managed Extensibility Framework

Creating a very simple app with Managed Extensibilty Framework to get familiar with the basic concepts.

Part 43: Introducing the Managed Extensibility Framework

VS 2010 Editor Extensibility is built on MEF. But what is MEF and why to use it?

Part 42: Five Reasons to learn VS 2010 Editor Extensibility

VS 2010 Editor Extensibility is great! Learn why it is worth to use it.

Something you may want to know about toolbars.

Part 40: Working with Hierarchies Part 5 - Managed Classes for Custom Hierarchies

In this part I introduce a pattern to create custom hierarchies with managed code. We see how to use this pattern in a very simple custom hierarchy.

Part 39: Working with Hierarchies Part 4 - Hierarchy Windows

In order we can work with hierarchies, we have to display them. This is the task of hierarchy windows this article is about.

Part 38: VS 2010 Editor - Text Coloring Sample Deep Dive

The VS 2010 SDK CTP contains an editor extensibility sample called Text Coloring. In this deep dive I tell you how this sample works.

Part 37: Meet Visual Studio 2010 and the New VS SDK 2010 CTP

I have just arrived back to home from PDC 2008 and in this article I play with the VS 2010 SDK CTP.

Part 36: Working with Hierarchies Part 3 - Properties and Hierarchy Traversal

In this part I treat a set of useful classes to access hierarchy properties and show a sample program to traverse through the solution hierarchy.

Part 35: Working with Hierarchies Part 2 - Internal Structure of Hierarchies

We go on with our tour around VS hierarchies. This time I introduce the structural properties used to form a hierachy from a collection of nodes.

Part 34: Working with Hierarchies Part 1 - Hierarchy Basics

With this article I start a mini-series about hierarchies in Visual Studio. In this part I give you an overview about the "ancestor of all hierarchies".

Part 33: VSXtra at DevCon - Part 2

The second part of my presentation held on VSX Developer Conference 2008

Part 32: VSXtra at DevCon - Part 1

The first part of my presentation held on VSX Developer Conference 2008

Part 31: Merging Package Menus with VSCT

In this article I show you how to merge menu items in a package into a menu provided by on other package.

Part 30: Custom Editors in VSXtra

After three month of work on VSXtra I thought that I have everything to build my former experiences with custom editors and add appropriate support classes. In this post I show you the results.

Part 29: VSXtraCommands Part 2 — Commands removing recent items

I give you an overview about how the Clear Recent File and Project List commands are implemented in PowerCommands. I show you how these commands can be built up using VSXtra.

Part 28: VSXtraCommands Part 1 — Command handling patterns

In this article I introduce the alterantive implementation of the command handling architecture in Pablo's PowerCommands. I demonstrate the power of declarative approach in VSXtra.

Part 27: Multiple Tool Windows

However Visual Studio supports multiple instances of a tool window, due to the command handling mechanism, it is a challenge to create multiple instances handling their own visual command state. In this article I show a pattern with VSXtra to cope with this issue.

Part 26: Services — with no-code service initialization

I share you some learnings from the VS SDK's Service Reference sample I treat the VSXtra pattern solving service initialization without extra code.

Part 25: Advanced VSCT Concepts: Behind Combos

In this article I treat in details how to use combo boxes with Visual Studio Packages and also would like to present you an improved way with VSXtra.

Part 24: Introducing VSXtra

I have started a new project in parallel with LearnVSXNow! aiming a new and improved Managed Project Framework. You can read about the first results of the project here.

Part 23: Coping with GUIDs

In my last post I promised to show a few patterns demonstrating how a new Managed Package Framework could be improved by means of usability, less coding for a task, etc. In this article I show you a few patterns to be used to improve the perception of using GUIDs.

Part 22: Thinking about a new MPF

I suppose, not I am the only one who can imagine a VS SDK and MPF that can be used better than the one we have today. In this post I share my thoughts about this topic. Please, share your imaginations, comments, additions and opinion with me!

Introducing LVN! Sidebars

When writing LearnVSXNow articles and working on projects I have collected many “how-to-dos”, created small but useful code artifacts, found irritating bugs, etc. I decided to create a separate thread within the LearnVSXNow series not tied to the main stream just for publishing these small “knowledge elements”. I named this thread LVN! Sidebar. You can read the first blog posts:

Mainstream posts

Part 21: PowerCommands Deep Dive — Analyzing Commands

I go deep into the code of the following commands: Clear All Panes, Clear Recent Project and File List, Close All, Undo Close.

Part 20: PowerCommands Deep Dive — Commands and UI

In this part I dive into details about PowerCommands UI. We look how option pages are created, integrated into the Options dialog and how related settings are persisted. We also examine the Model-View-Presenter pattern used to implement a few UI with WPF.