With VS 2010, the IDE recreates the user's 10.0_Config registry hive and remerges menu resources when it detects a change under HKLM\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0. For VS 2012, the IDE team felt this had too much of a negative effect on startup...

3500+ samples at your fingertips. The new Sample Browser Extension allows you to quickly search, download, and experiment with sample code covering just about anything you can think of. And if you can’t find what you’re looking for, you can submit a sample...

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional will launch on April 12 but you can beat the rush and secure your copy today by pre-ordering at the affordable estimated retail price of $549, a saving of $250. If you use a previous version of Visual Studio...

Aaron Marten’s blog “ Pkgdef and the Experimental Instance in VS 2010 ” points out that when devenv.exe is invoked with the ‘/rootsuffix Exp’ switch, the VS Shell no longer uses the experimental registry hive. Instead, the shell merges the HKLM\Software...

The .pkgdef file was first introduced with VS 2008, to allow for easily registering packages targeting the VS 2008 isolated shell. Bill Wienberger details the rationale behind this change in the following blog entry: What’s A PkgDef? And Why? There are...

While it’s still possible to register your packages, by manually or programmatically adding the requisite registry keys and values under the HKLM\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0 registry hive, it’s no longer the recommended way to register your packages...

On systems where an application or device is actively using UIAutomation (Tablet, Multi-touch, etc), the IDE may crash if the user is typing while intellisense is being displayed or dismissed. KB article describing this problem will be posted to http...

Recently, one of our partners had a question pertaining to Help 2.0 integration, and I wanted to use the SDKSample to try a few things out with filters and help content. Apparently, it's been a while since I last played with that particular sample. Upon...

Background: Recently one of our VSIP partners asked if it was possible to customize the default error dialog that the Isolated Shell displays when encountering an error. Let's suppose you have a package command handler that might throw an error with...

Background: VSPackages can offer up a set of custom properties for their Tools.Options pages, by registering the pages under Visual Studio's AutomationProperties registry key, by using the ProvideOptionPageAttribute . This allows for programmatic access...

Background: The PcwTESample project, is a sample which illustrates how to extend the Team Explorer tool window, and upload customized Team Projects to TFS. It is installed with the Visual Studio 2008 SDK under the ...\ VisualStudioTeamSystemIntegration...

Background: I always have a difficult time remembering the various properties that can be set on an EnvDTE.Project object, and I never seem to find the right documentation , to jog my memory. Over the years the documentation has improved quite a bit...

Background: IPropertyPage.Help is not invoked on property pages integrated with the Application Designer. Consequently, you need to push an F1 keyword by calling IHelpService.AddContextAttribute, similar to what the VB .NET and C# project property...

Background: Historically , localized resources for Visual Studio packages were located in native satellite resource DLLs, located in a codepage subdirectory. For example, if you had installed both the English and Japanese versions of Visual Studio...

There are a good number of support options available for developers with questions and/or problems pertaining to extending or automating the Visual Studio development environment. Be it macro programming, COM automation, Add-in development, custom project...