The last few days I have been playing around with a new Visual Studio 2005 feature called Project Item Templates and Project Templates found in Beta 1.  Essentially it is a very cool way to create code and then have it show up inside of Visual Studio dialogs.  For example, a “Project Item Template” shows up in the “Add New Item” dialog when you select the “Project” menu and choose “Add New Item”.  A “Project Template” shows up in the “New Project” dialog when you select the “File” menu and choose “New Project”.

What is very cool is these templates are easily created and plugged into Visual Studio.  Below is a basic way to get started with an Project Item Template.

1. Create a class file (test.cs).
2. Create a file with a .vstemplate extension (testTemplate.vstemplate).  This is basically the file that contains XML that the designer can read to understand how it should display your template.  See code sample below..
3. Add the test.cs and the testTemplate.vstemplate to a compressed folder (testTemplate.zip).
4. Add the testTemplate.zip to the appropriate ItemTemplate folder found in your “My Documents“ folder.  For example, since I did this in Csharp I placed the file in: 
   My Documents\Visual Studio\ItemTemplates\Visual C#
5. If you have the Visual Studio open when you pasted in the .zip file you will need to exit Visual Studio.  Restart Visual Studio, open your project and select the “Project” menu and choose “Add New Item”.  Scroll the Add New Item dialog to the bottom and you will see a section called “My Templates“ and the custom item template you created should be found there.

Additionally, if you want the template to show up in the “Add New Item“ dialog with all the standard templates and not in the My Templates section, you can add the .zip file to the following location:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\ItemTemplates\CSharp\1033

When performing this last step and placing the template with all the standard items it is important after you past the .zip file to the path above, you will need to run “devenv /setup“ from a command prompt, with Visual Studio not open.  This is a bug in beta 1 that is being worked on. 

I would love to hear any feedback that you have about this feature.  Below is the sample code for the .vstemplate file that I discussed.  For more information you can check out the online docs.
-Jeremy

<VSTemplate Type="Item" Version="1.1.1">
  <TemplateData>
    <Name>
      <String>Testing an Item Template</String>
    </Name>
    <Description>
        <String>A test of an item template</String>
    </Description>
    <Icon>
        <FilePath>Litening.ico</FilePath>
    </Icon>
    <ProjectType>
      <Languages>
          <Language>CSharp</Language>
      </Languages>
    </ProjectType>
    <DefaultName>Test.cs</DefaultName>
  </TemplateData>  
  <TemplateContent>
    <ProjectItem>
      <SourceFile>Test.cs</SourceFile>
    </ProjectItem>
  </TemplateContent>
</VSTemplate>

Chad Royal recently blogged about developers sending him a information and a picture to put up on the hallway.  This will help the team as a constant reminder of the great people that are using Visual Studio.  This seems like a cool way to let Visual Studio know who you are:

http://blogs.msdn.com/chadroyal/archive/2004/05/14/132307.aspx

 

This past week the Microsoft MVP Summit was held and had the opportunity to talk to several MVP's about community.  Particularly, during lunch one day we had a Microsoft Community table that filled up and there was not a seat available.  There were some great conversations and many things talked about how Microsoft can help with community.  I spoke with several MVP's about the idea of biographies that I posted on my blog back in January.  I believe the overall feeling was that biographies of Microsoft Employees may be helpful to locate where people participated and what they work on, but it is a small part of the picture.  I certainly agree with that statement and know there are many things that we can do.  I do hope that projects like Channel9 may contribute to and add value to the community by showing what we do at Microsoft.  All and all it was a great time and I cant wait for next years summit.

I was wondering if you feel like you know Microsoft and how much of that matters?  I hope this is not a strange  question, but I think it does has some value so I decided to ask it.  I don't know that it matters a lot about what technology you are using, but do you feel there is a Microsoft employee/expert behind that technology.  If there is an employee, do you try to find articles and resources by that expert or are you unable to find a Microsoft face behind that product?

Microsoft France has an interesting site that contains biographies:
http://www.microsoft.com/france/education/contact/

This site seems pretty interesting.  If you find the Microsoft face important, then I would be happy to hear from you and what you would like to see.

Thanks for all the great comments on Communities and Developers.  I was definately interested in the many of the items that were discussed and I thought I would maybe write about these over the next few days.

There was definitely some common thought about the importance of local events.  Simon Stewart indicated in his feedback that regular meetings where were an important part of the community experience.  Denny wrote about the needs to bring event broadcasts to local areas since getting across town is much easier then getting to some of the larger events that require travel.  I would guess that most of you use the internet to find a group in your area or perhaps are using the Microsoft User Groups site.  Some of you are probably even organizing these types of events and are looking for great speakers to come and talk. 

How do you typically find these events?  How would you like to be notified about events?  Would a community profile help so events could be targeted to your interests?  What profile information would be important for not only those looking to attend events, but also those looking to use the system to organize an event? 

I guess it really comes down to the question of how much information would you share based on the value that could be returned.  For example, if I indicated a geographical region in my profile I would expect to get notifications of events in my area if I provided it.