umutozel / learnvsxnow

Copying http://learnvsxnow.codeplex.com/ before codeplex shuts down.

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.

Part 41: Toolbar Layout and Persistence

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.

LVN! Sidebar #6: Longer version of Package Reference Sample Deep Dive

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.

LVN! Sidebar #5: Deep Dives on MSDN Code Gallery

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:

LVN! Sidebar #4: Command handlers

LVN! Sidebar #3: Simplifying tool window declaration

LVN! Sidebar #2: Resolving string resources

LVN! Sidebar #1: Automatically loading packages

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.

Part 19: PowerCommands Deep Dive — Command Architecture

In this post we take a look at the architecture of the free PowerCommands tool package and go into details on how commands are defined and executed.

Part 18: Advanced VSCT concepts

In this post I treat a few advanced .vsct concept like, submenus, toolbars, menu controllers, key bindings and visibility contexts.

Part 17: Creating a simple custom editor — under pressure

In the previous articles we treated all components of a custom editor exceptthe editor pane. In this article we look whats behind the SimpleEditorPane<,> class.

Part 16: Creating a simple custom editor — the first ten meter

We look into the details of the main components of the sample: the editor factory, the UI, the data and the surface of the EditorPane code.

Part 15: Creating a simple custom editor — the basics

Part 14: Basics of the .vsct file

Part 13: Menus and comands in VS IDE

Part 12: Stepping forward: “VsxLibrary” and “HowToPackage”

Part 11: Testing a package

Part 10: Creating our first toolset — Reusing code

Part 9: Creating our first toolset — Refactoring to a service

Part 8: Intermezzo — The regpkg.exe utility

Part 7: Creating our first toolset — Finishing the sample

Part 6: Creating our first toolset — Prolog

Part 5: Basic VSX ideas

Part 4: Creating a package with a tool window

Part 3: Creating a package with a simple command

Part 2: Creating an empty package

Part 1: How to start VSX programming?