There's a great on-demand webcast available that teaches you the basics about Microsoft Visual Studio Extensbility in about 60 minutes. To view the webcast, go to the Visual Studio Webcasts page, and look in the "On Demand Webcasts" section for "Momentum Webcast: Do-It-Yourself Tools Inside Visual Studio (Level 100)." Here's a brief video index:

  • 03:00 Visual Studio extensibility approaches
  • 05:40 Visual Studio extensibility platform diagram
  • 10:00 Demo of the XPathmania tool, which shows a custom tool windows that integrates into the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE)
  • 16:00 Pros and cons of each of the Visual Studio extensibility approaches
  • 20:30 VSPackage architecture diagram
  • 25:00 Demo of how the XPathmania tool was built using the Visual Studio 2005 SDK V4.0
  • 39:00 How to use the Visual Studio 2005 SDK V4.0 to create a simple VSPackage
  • 42:15 Future Visual Studio extensibility plans
  • 43:30 Visual Studio extensibility resources, Q&A, etc.

Enjoy!

-- Paul Cornell

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