Paul Cornell : Visual Studio 2005 SDK

Visual Studio 2005 SDK v3 Docs Now Wiki-Enabled

Paul Cornell [MSFT] — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 08:12:00 GMT

Now that we've published the Visual Studio 2005 SDK v3 documentation to MSDN (the doc set's launching-off page is here), we're going one step further. We're now participating in a Beta of a Wiki-enabled version of the docs (the Wiki version of the doc set's launching-off page is here). This means that you can attach your own comments, feedback, and code to each of the Visual Studio SDK docs on the Web site, and it will be available for everyone else to benefit from.

To add your content to the MSDN Wiki Beta, do the following:

Go to the desired page on the MSDN Wiki Beta Web site.
Click the Community Content icon near the top of the page to go to the Community Content section of the page.
In the Community Content seciton, click the Add New Content link.
If you're not already signed in to Microsoft registration services, sign in with your Windows Live ID or Microsoft Passport account.
Accept the legal terms by clicking the I Accept button.
If prompted, read the usage instructions, and then click the Continue button.
Enter a subject and a body section for your contribution, and then click the Submit button.

We look forward to reading your contributions!

-- Paul

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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Visual Studio 2005 SDK v3 Release Now Available - Without "Sign-In" Step

Paul Cornell [MSFT] — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 06:15:00 GMT

You can now download the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 SDK version 3.0 here directly from the Microsoft Download Center Web site. You no longer have to go through the members-only VSIP Web site.

Again, just a reminder that the Web version of the corresponding documentation is available here, as well as in the v3 download itself.

-- Paul

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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Visual Studio 2005 SDK v3 Release Now Available

Paul Cornell [MSFT] — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 07:18:00 GMT

The "v3" version of the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 SDK released here today.

The Web version of the corresponding documentation is available here, as well as in the v3 download itself.

-- Paul

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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Visual Studio 2005 SDK Documentation Now Available on the Web

Paul Cornell [MSFT] — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 18:47:00 GMT

I am pleased to announce that the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 SDK documentation is now available to the public as part of the MSDN Library Web site.

To access the Web-based documentation, do one or more of the following:

Browse to the MSDN2 Library starting page. In the Table of Contents pane, expand MSDN Library, expand Development Tools and Languages, expand Visual Studio, and click Visual Studio SDK.
Browse directly to the Visual Studio SDK documentation starting page.
With Visual Studio 2005 and the Visual Studio 2005 SDK installed, do the following:

Start Visual Studio 2005.
On the Tools menu, click Options.
Expand Environment, expand Help, and click Online.
In the When loading Help content area, click the Try online first, then local option.
Click OK.
Now, when you attempt to access the Visual Studio 2005 SDK documentation using the F1 key and the Help Search window from within Visual Studio 2005 and you are connected to the MSDN Library Web site over the Internet, Visual Studio will first attempt to display the appropriate SDK Help topic from the MSDN Library Web site inside of the Visual Studio 2005 Documentation Viewer. (Note that the Web-based documentation is not integrated into the Index or Contents windows of the Visual Studio 2005 Documentation Viewer.) If you are not able to connect to the MSDN Library Web site over the Internet, Visual Studio will then attempt to display the appropriate SDK Help topic from the offline documentation.

-- Paul

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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

You're Invited! Visual Studio SDK Documentation Survey

Paul Cornell [MSFT] — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 06:13:00 GMT

My team, Visual Studio SDK User Education team, participated in a recent customer event on the Microsoft campus. One of the things we did was to present event attendees with the following survey. If you use the Visual Studio SDK, I'd appreciate 10 minutes or less of your time to answer the following seven questions. Just use the Comments link on the Web site where this blog post is located, in order to deliver your response to me. Our team is dedicated to improving the Visual Studio SDK documentation to meet customers' needs, and this is your opportunity to tell us how to help you find the information you need when you need it.

#1. The Visual Studio SDK documentation featured Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) pages for the first time in the August 2006 CTP release. For FAQ pages, what would you prefer in terms of Table of Contents organization?

a. Each FAQ page should be as close as possible to its corresponding feature area. For example, the VSPackages FAQ page should be in the same Table of Contents node as all of the VSPackages documentation.
b. All of the FAQ pages should be grouped together into a single FAQ node in the Table of Contents. For example the VSPackages FAQ page should be in a single FAQ node along with all of the other FAQ pages.
c. I have no preference.

#2. Have you read any of these new FAQ pages yet?

a. Yes
b. No

#3. If you responded "Yes" (a.) to the previous question, what do like or dislike about these FAQ pages?

#4. Would you prefer end-to-end “walkthroughs,” or would you prefer tutorials, to help you learn more about new or unfamiliar technology areas and product features? (Note that producing tutorials takes more time than producing walkthroughs.)

a. I prefer end-to-end walkthroughs – just describe the specific steps I need to get familiar with a technology area, use a feature, or complete a set of tasks. I find additional information in this context to be distracting.
b. I prefer end-to-end tutorials – I’m interested in reading more commentary or taking additional time to venture into related documentation to get familiar with a technology area, use a feature, or complete a set of tasks.
c. I have no preference.

#5. If we were to create tutorials based on the IronPython integration sample, which of the following *three* areas should we focus on?

a. MSBuild tasks
b. Projects
c. Language service
d. Console window
e. Windows Forms designer
f. Web site projects
g. Web application projects
h. Installation
i. All of the above
j. None of the above

#6. If you answered "none of the above" (j.) to the previous question, please choose the options that best explain why.

a. I don't like tutorials.
b. I don't think most people doing Visual Studio integration would like tutorials.
c. IronPython is too big a sample.
d. IronPython is too different from my language to be useful.
e. I need API reference more than tutorials.
f. I need how-to material more than tutorials.

#7. If you were allowed to have Microsoft change just *one* thing in the Visual Studio SDK documentation, what would it be?

-- Paul

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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Visual Studio 2005 SDK August 2006 CTP is Now Available

Paul Cornell [MSFT] — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 21:26:00 GMT

The Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 SDK August 2006 Community Technology Preview (CTP) is now available for download here (sign in required). In this release, we've added the Source Outliner, Extensibility Explorer, Visual C++ Snippet and SuperDiff power toys. We've also improved on IronPython work as well as added a Running Document Table (RDT) Explorer and Document View Editor samples.

-- Paul

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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

How to use the Visual Studio SDK on Windows Vista

Paul Cornell [MSFT] — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 20:43:00 GMT

Allen Denver blogs about how to use the Visual Stuido SDK on Windows Vista.

-- Paul

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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

A Gentle Introduction to Visual Studio 2005 Extensibility

Paul Cornell [MSFT] — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 08:18:00 GMT

This article at the CodeGuru Web site describes how to extend Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 through macros, add-ins, and VSPackages. In this article, you learn about the Managed Package Framework (MPF), and you learn how to create a VSPackage to extend Visual Studio.

-- Paul

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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Problem (and Fix) for the Visual Studio 2005 SDK's OnlineHelpSearchProvider Sample

Paul Cornell [MSFT] — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 22:53:00 GMT

My team released the documentation as part of the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 SDK - April 2006 V2 RTM. Unfortunately, the OnlineHelpSearchProvider sample has a few known issues that weren't caught before the SDK's Readme file was frozen. For more information, see Martin Tracy's post on this.

-- Paul

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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Your Feedback Wanted to Improve Visual Studio Help

Paul Cornell [MSFT] — Sun, 16 Apr 2006 01:59:00 GMT

Last week, I asked several customers who were visiting Microsoft to give me some feedback on the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 documentation and the Visual Studio 2005 SDK documentation. I'd like to give you the opportunity to participate also -- simply add a comment to this blog post containing your responses. Here are the four questions that I asked them:

If you use Visual Studio 2005, if you could vote for only *two* of the following types of Help pages/topics for us to improve in the documentation for future Visual Studio versions, what would they be?

More "Getting Started" or "Essentials" pages
More "Guided Tour" pages
More "How To" pages
More end-to-end "Walkthrough" pages
Deeper architectural coverage
More "Best Practices" pages

If you use the Visual Studio 2005 SDK to customize or extend Visual Studio 2005, and if you could vote for only *four* of the following areas for us to improve the documentation in future Visual Studio SDK releases, what would they be?

VSPackages
Services
Menu and Toolbar Extensibility
Tool Window Extensibility
Project Extensibility
Language Integration
Editor Extensibility
Debugging Extensibility
Help Integration and Extensibility (including HelpStudio Lite docs)
Source Code Control Extensibility
Testing Solutions and Testing Extensibility
Data Designer Extensibility
System Definition Model (SDM) Extensibility
Solution Deployment
Team Foundation Server (TFS) Extensibility
Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA)
Domain-Specific Language (DSL) Tools

Is there anything in the Visual Studio 2005 Help or Visual Studio 2005 SDK Help that you really like and you want us to continue investing our time in for future Visual Studio versions?
If you could see just *one* thing added to, changed, or removed from the Visual Studio documentation or Visual Studio SDK documentation, what would it be?

-- Paul

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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Creating VSPackages

Paul Cornell [MSFT] — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 21:16:00 GMT

Now that I've settled more into my new role as the documentation manager for the Microsoft Visual Studio SDK (which you can download through Visual Studio SDK Downloads (requires login)), my goal is to start going through the main how-to and walkthrough Help topics in the Visual Studio SDK. The first how-to I went through earlier this week is titled "How to: Create VSPackages (C#)." Which made me stop to think, "why would I want to go through all of the steps to create a VSPackage? Why not just create a macro or an add-in instead?" So I went and double-checked what I thought were my answers with some of the writers on the Visual Studio SDK documentation team. Here are the results of my chats with them.

You should use a macro when you need a quick, simple, temporary, or easily-distributable solution to automating Microsoft Visual Studio. For example, you could capture a series of keystrokes as a macro. Then you could run that macro later. You could even export that macro as a .vb file for another Visual Studio user's benefit.

You can use an add-in when you want to write code in a language other than Visual Basic. You could use an add-in when you want to go about protecting your code in a more robust way. You should choose an add-in when you want to make your code more easily discoverable in the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE). For example, you want to expose your keystroke macro as a Visual Studio toolbar button.

Use a VSPackage when you want to extend Visual Studio in ways that can't be done with macros and add-ins. Some examples would be integrating new programming languages into Visual Studio, creating custom code editors and solution designers, creating new solution project types, creating custom code debuggers, and exposing custom productivity tools through the Visual Studio IDE.

My goal next week is to go through the Visual Studio SDK's "Walkthrough: Creating a Tools Options Page" Help topic to learn how to create a custom Tools Options page. As I get more into these, hopefully I'll be able to share some more of my thoughts about them with you.

-- Paul

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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.