Microsoft just recently released the Visualization and Modeling Feature Pack for Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate. This provides additional great features for visualizing your code, seeing its interconnections, and doing something about it. The base UML diagramming...

We've just released the new Pro Power Tools which is a collection of useful extensions to make your day-to-day use of Visual Studio 2010 even more productive. Highlights in this release: Collection of useful editor extensions New and improved...

Now that Visual Studio 2010 is available, it would be great to get more feedback on the new Extension Manager feature in this version. This can encompass a lot of things from the installation experience, to the online extension discovery, to the installed...

Chris wrote a nice review of the VS2010 Extension Manager feature at TechRepublic. Having worked on the team that wrote that feature, it's always nice to see a positive review of what you've spent your effort working on. As Chris also noted, there is...

Have you ever created a VS Package, tried to run it in Visual Studio only to get the infamous Package Load Failure dialog? Created an editor extension, tried to use it and it never shows up in the VS2010 code editor? Well then the Extension Analyzer is...

I've been working on a custom start page sample that creates a new tab on the typical Visual Studio StartPage. This new tab integrates in Bing search functionality, letting developers type in their search query and performing a search. The results can...

For all of you fans of the Power Commands extension, Lance, from our team, just updated this extension and posted it up on the VS Gallery. This topic contains a full list of all of the new commands that are part of this extension. But, the most interesting...

For the sample extension that I'm working on, I wanted to have the ability to launch a URL in Visual Studio. This is useful for a more integrated experience in the IDE, but of course, some people may prefer to use their default web browser instead. So...

When working with Visual Studio extensibility, getting a ServiceProvider is the main way to find and use services that are available in Visual Studio. The new VS Start Page is written in WPF and getting to a ServiceProvider from within the page or one...

For those that have seen Visual Studio 2010 , there is a fancy new start page that is much more functional and integrated with the product. Part of this new Start Page infrastructure is the ability to replace the one from the product with a custom page...

After 2+ years in development, Visual Studio 2010 became generally available today. Also available is the matching Visual Studio 2010 SDK . Download it today, and start building extensions for VS2010.

Today is the general release for the Visual Studio 2010 RC . There's been a lot of performance work on the IDE to make it faster and use less memory. And, a host of bugs that were fixed since the Beta. Try it today @: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio...

This is a new tool that will make creation and packaging of project and item templates a whole lot easier. This wizard steps you through taking existing projects and making them into reusable templates that can create similar types of projects. This extension...

I was just looking through some new extensions on the Visuals Studio Gallery for VS2010 Beta 2 and came across this one: the SQL Azure Explorer by Johan Danforth . This extension creates a tool window in Visual Studio similar to the Server Explorer, that...

The Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 SDK is now available for everyone to use from the Download Center. So, install it (it's quick), and start building you very own extensions to Visual Studio today! And once you have those extensions ready to share with world...

We announced today the availability of the Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 on MSDN . Later this week, on Wednesday, it will generally be available for everyone from the Download Center. There has been a ton of work, performance improvements, and bug fixing...

Jared just released a cool new editor extension for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 to provide Vim editor emulations . You can find this on the VS Gallery and through the Extension Manager in VS 2010, so go test drive it today. He also talks more about what...

ScottGu recently posted about the new online templates feature of the Visual Studio 2010 Beta1. The discussions on his blog have been pretty lively, and mostly folks seem to like this new feature. The Online tab of the New Project Dialog is built on...

Pablo Galiano has just published two you project template extensions for the Visual Studio Gallery , both of them for doing MEF integration with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1. Check them out: Template for creating a VS Package that exposes MEF extension...

Chuck England has just recently posted the sources for MPF for Projects on CodePlex . If you're interested in creating your own project systems for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1, this is the place to start. And, for those of you wishing to port your project...

For those of you trying out Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1, you may have already noticed... But, Visual Studio 2010 no longer requires you to create Package Load Keys (PLKs) for writing and deploying VSPackage extensions to VS. This will probably come with...

I recently posted an update the the WPF AboutBox (CS) extension (v 0.4) on the VS Gallery. You can find it by launching the Extension Manager in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1. If you've already previously installed it, then click on the Updates tab on the...

Aaron (one of the developers on my team working on the SDK) just wrote a couple of great posts for folks wishing to use and to understand how the SDK works for VS 2010 Beta 1. Definitely worth a read if you're working on VS extensions: VSIX Project...

There are a couple of other ways to create project/item template extensions besides using the VSIX Explorer. So, I’m going to give some quick steps here for folks that would like to use an alternative… Just replace Part 2 of my earlier posts with either...

The VSIX file we created in Part 2 is the new unit of deployment for extension in Visual Studio 2010. VS knows how to install these types of extensions, and the VS Gallery is a place where you can host them. Also, the contents of the Gallery are then...