Let a "Breakpoints" window (by default opened by Debug>Windows>Breakpoints [ctrl+B, D]) serve as an example. Basically I select few breakpoints in it and I would like to know in my add-in which elements in this window are selected. I am aware that I can get collection of breakpoints in project but I would like to know what elements are selected in "Breakpoints" window.
"Is it possible to get selected items in window or even access its content at all?"
Also I am not sure whenever or not should I post a separate question for this but is there actually a way to capture user activity in IDE like for example capturing an event when user sets (adds) a breakpoint?
Originally I also asked if is it possible to achieve certain things in Visual Studio Express Edition. But this part is irrevelant.
Conclusion:
(after reading jessehouwing's answer)
I guess it is not possible using an Add-ins. Use VSPackages isntead. Also Add-ins are deprecated as of Visual Studio 2013 version.
As mentioned in my comments, what you're trying to accomplish is explicitly prohibited in the Visual Studio Express edition and is a violation of it's license. To extend the product, you need to have at least Visual Studio Professional Edition. many of the extensibility points will actively refuse any communication with 3rd party add-ins.
Almost all the things you're asking are possible using Visual Studio Extensibility once you've installed the professional edition. Products like OzCode show that almost everything is possible. Remember that most features inside visual studio are themselves extensions of the product.
Your question, indeed a whole list of questions, is indeed not the way to ask something on StackOverflow. I can give you some pointers to the documentation, which you've probably already found, and maybe to some open source products that themselves extend parts of Visual Studio that can serve as examples, but from there you'll have to piece something together until you're able to ask more specific questions.
Events you can subscribe to, the breakpoints are a CommandEvents I suspect.
Manipulating windows inside Visual Studio
Projects that extend the debugger that might serve as an example:
PyTools (debugger for Python inside Visual Studio)
Node.js tools for Visual studio (extending the Immediate Window)
But there is no easy answer to your question that fits inside this window. I'd suggest you use a tool like Reflector to look at how Microsoft accomplishes certain things (most of Visual Studio Extensibility is written in .NET anyways) and to look at open source projects that extend visual studio behavior. There are quite a few out there on Codeplex.
I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to accomplish and how it's different from the Breakpoints features inside Visual Studio Professional and up.
I suggest you ask your question in the Visual Studio Extensibility forums over on MSDN, which is in a collaborative forum format, instead of a Q&A format, allowing people to answer your question bit by bit.
Just installed VS 2013 (was previously on 2010) and I deeply regret it. I'm so glad the company picked up the tab!
I've read around a bit and found that a lot of people hate the VS 2012/2013 look & feel, and there are tools and tips to bring back the 2010 look & feel in VS 2012. However I couldn't find something like that for 2013 and wondering if I missed it or it just wasn't invented yet.
Edit: Two things I did find which someone else might be interested in too:
Disabling the ALL CAPS menus (this is is another SO question and found easily)
Disabling the file contents expanding (this appears to be less known and god knows how this guy even found it...
Edit #2: In the end I didn't use the themes in the provided answer. It seems that the "close to 2010" theme comes built-in in 2013 under the "Blue" name. I decided not to bother with icons and colors beyond that, to try and get used to these icons. The hacks above, coupled with VSCommands proved sufficient for me.
Here's a great tool for customizing your VS UI. It works with 2012 or 2013. There's also quite a few different themes available around the web, some of which mimic the UI of 2010.
Visual Studio 2012 Color Theme Editor
I use rake scripts for running builds and would like to be able to get syntax highlighting within visual studio.
Is it possible to get ruby syntax highlighting in Visual Studio 2012?
I've been searching for a while but not come up with a solution yet. I'm only looking for free solutions so Ruby In Steel is out.
Vote here for IronRuby support for visual studio 2012
Unfortunately the IronRuby tools for Visual Studio don't yet support VS2012.
I might be wrong about that though, it seems that the development has been moved to Github.
My preferred external editor is Sublime Text so I've opted use that for Ruby files. You just right click on your rakefile.rb is the VS solution explorer and choose "Open With". In the dialog you can add an editor of your choice and set it to be the default.
There was, at one point in 2008 anyway, a free edition of Ruby in Steel and it seems like the download link on that page does still work. It has a slightly limited feature set compared to pay versions of the software, but does include syntax Highlighting. So have a go and see if that will do what you need for free.
And for the rest of you, Neil specifically asked for VS internal syntax highlighting, not for you to plug your favorite text editor.
I am having an issue with my context menu in Visual Studio 2010 that is driving me nuts. I think it started when I installed the Code Snippet Designer Extent ion but I am not 100% sure about that. I didn't notice it until after I uninstalled that extension with a few others.
I have tried reinstalling and then uninstalling the extension again but that didn't work either. I am left with these extensions on my machine DevExpress Tools, Dpack, PowerCommands for VS, Productivity Power Tools and the VS10x Code Marker.
I have another system that has all the same extensions installed but doesn't have the context menu problem and I never loaded the Snippet Designer on that machine, which is why I think the problem was caused by something in that particular extension.
Here is what it looks like.
http://www.mydatafish.com/contextmenu.png I tried to post a picture but I need more points to do so and it is hard to explain without a picture so please take a look at the link.
Anybody have any ideas of how I can remove these phantom mene items? By the way I did try resetting the context mene through the the customize menu item in the Tools menu.
OK I am not sure how it got in the condition that it was but I found the program that was causing the problem. It was something called "Code Helper" and it was an add it that I used with VS 2005. It was listed as a AddIn for Visual Studio 2010 but wasn't inside the Addin directory for 2010.
To get rid of the problem I removed the program from the Programs and Features (Add/Remove).
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Closed 10 years ago.
What are in your opinion the "must have" Visual Studio 2010 extensions?
OData Protocol Visualizer is fine
Solid Softfare Xplorer isn't free, but looks very nice
Just tried NuGet Tools and it's GREAT
Resharper 5.0 is the one I must have. Some others are nice to have as well.
I like the Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power Tools.
Mine are
PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2010 offer so much...
Triple Click - Select line with Triple Click
StructureAdornment - Show scope of code
Go To Definition And Them Editor - As mentioned by Noah
Matt's Visual Studio Color Theme Editor is proving to be really popular (over 10,000 downloads as of 4/18/10).
I've written a couple that are popular; Go To Definition is one of the most popular. If you do a search for my name ("Noah Richards"), you'll find some of the others (triple click to select whole lines, italicize comments, spell checking for strings and comments, and about 7 others).
There's at least one other spell check extension on the gallery, the HTML Spell Checker. It's more mature than the one I wrote but requires Office to work.
I love the Win7 Taskbar Extension, especiall when working with multiple solutions.
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/0c92dd87-50ac-489e-882b-b99de7624502
I have found the snippets to be useful for various tasks along the way, and so this is a good way to smooth out the maintenance of such snippets:
Snippet Designer
Description Adapted from the website:
A Snippet editor integrated inside of the IDE.
Opening any .snippet file
Uses the native Visual Studio code editor
Mark replacements with a convenient right click menu.
Snippet properties inside the Visual Studio properties window.
A Snippet Explorer tool
A right Click "Export as Snippet" menu option added to C#, VB and XML code editor to send highlighted code directly to the Snippet Editor
When using SVN
Visual SVN
saves a lot of time and it is very handy.
Can I put a plug in for my own extension? :)
PowerGUI Visual Studio Extension - Add PowerShell support to VS2010
I use these extensions:
Productivity Power Tools
Autoscroller
The first one has a lot of options, just enable the options you like. I liked the 'close selected tab' icon on the right corner in Visual studio 2008. You can enable that icon again with this extension. I also like the option to 'pin' tabs.
The autoscroller enables the scrolling in the main window, its also called 'middle-click scrolling'. I missed taht from VS 2008 as well.
Microsoft Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 is a must have for WPF developers.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=eff8a0da-0a4d-48e8-8366-6ddf2ecad801&displaylang=en
Refactor is a must-have for me. CodeRush is also nice, though one of these years I need to seriously compare it to Resharper. I think most people stick with whichever they first use, as they both take a lot of time to learn.
http://www.devexpress.com/Downloads/Visual_Studio_Add-in/
Update
As pointed out below by Jonathan Allen, this functionality already exists in Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power Tools. Adding this extension, then, would be redundant if you already have that.
There are many ways to solve the posting of formatted code, but I liked the integrated nature of this extension and how you can tweak the resulting HTML:
Code4Blog
Description From Linked Page:
Code4Blog is a Visual Studio 2010 extension that allows to convert any code supported by Visual Studio IDE to HTML format with the same structure and colors. Main purpose of this extension is to prepare a code snippet to be published in rich documents, for example in blog posts, Microsoft Word documents or Help files. Some additional styling could be applied: max width and height of the code block, custom background (per code line), font family and font size, line numbering and others.
I'm using Visual Nunit which is rather nice if you don't have the money to stump up for something like ReSharper. It's only feature (as far as I'm aware) is to allow running nunit tests from within the IDE, which is nice becuase it means you don't have to revert to Nunit GUI every time you want to run some of your unit tests. Also seems pretty stable as of version 1.1.7.
I find the following useful
If you use TFS for ALM Management
Search Work Items for TFS 2010
VS10x Code Map is great for visually navigating classes
SpecFlow for mapping User Stories/Features to automated tests in a way that is readable by steak holders or team members without coding knowledge (Behaviour Driven Development)
And a Spell Checker for strings/comments is always good
I'm also going to plug my own extension - VSFileNav used for quickly finding a file in your solution using wildcards, camel case searches etc.
I developed it because there wasn't anything free (and good - SonicFileFinder was too slow) and used it many times every day.