I am building a Windows utility that shows the user interface of a Windows Phone page. Visual Studio has similar designer that shows how the XAML of the selected page looks like. Visual Studio's designer must use some special assemblies that actually render XAML of the page just like on a real device.
I would like to use the same assemblies as the designer of Visual Studio uses. What are those assemblies?
These are all internal stuff for VS and Blend. The following blogpost gives you some insight into how this works under the covers: http://advertboy.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/xamluipresenter-what-are-you/
Albeit not WP specific the same applies to phone. However this is NOT supported for use anywhere else.
I'm wondering what your use case is? There might be something better and supported for you to use.
Related
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.
I'd like to use Code Map, which can be used in Visual Studio 2012, also in Visual Studio 2010.
If you don't know what Code Map is, this is how it looks like:
here's a tutorial from Microsoft: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/dn194476.aspx
Is it somehow possible to use this in VS2010 or is there any similiar tools, which displays the different method calls? By this I want to display a method Method1() which calls another method called Method2(). This should be displayed like in the CodeMap (not by using hierarchy call, I want to see it with a UI). It should be free or an extension for VS2010.
I'm not aware of a free version that offers something that the Visual Studio 2012 Ultimate Edition offers, but you have a few alternatives:
NDepend features a Call Graph option
You can open the VS2010 solution in VS2012
Debugger Canvas offers a similar feature while debugging
Architecture Explorer Dependency Graphs and Sequence Diagrams
Someone asked about getting the WinRT XAML Toolkit controls to show up in Visual Studio Toolbox. I can see that they do show up when I look at the sample project that uses the source code version of the WinRT XAML Toolkit and I can find them in Blend in an app project that uses NuGet-packaged version of the Toolkit - just by searching for the controls by name, but they don't automatically show up in VS Toolbox somehow. I saw in Tim Heuer's article that you can make them show up in the Toolbox if you do a VSIX deployment, but the Toolkit doesn't support that option right now.
Is it possible to get it to work with NuGet or are using the source code or building Extension SDK the only options?
I think the possible way to do this would be to allow package manager to take additional parameters which would then add them to toolbox
If the default project templates reset the toolbox items each time, this might work great otherwise we will see versioning related issues in no time.
I'm new to Visual Basic. I have done some tutorials in Visual Studio 2010 and I am working with Visual Basic 6.0.
I don't know where I can write code the way I did in VB 2010. Instead of the code editor that was available in Visual Studio 2010, I get a UI editor, where I can add buttons. How can I simply write some Visual Basic code?
In VB6, there is a code view. If you double click the button it will take you to the click event in the code view for instance.
If you create modules.. (.bas file extension), you can write stand alone code. It's also possible to create an activex dll project to write code components. I used to do this, register them with com and then call them from ASP pages on NT4 servers back in the day.
VB6 predates the .NET framework though. It's much different than what you've learned in Visual Studio 2010. None of the .NET libraries are there and there are some syntax differences as VB.net is more strict than VB6 is.
You code use other editors alongside VB 6's editor like Notepad ++ and Sublime Text if you are really good in VB othersise just stick to it. Its very cool and people are making world class apps with vb6 check planetsourcecode.com you see wonders
I need to modify some logic of Javascript Intellisense on Visual Studio 2008 SP1 like some build-in function such as ScriptEngine, ScriptEngineBuildVersion and etc. Moreover, I need to dynamically generate function depend on opened docuement.
In Visual Studio, language services are provided via VSPackages. Most built-in language services in Visual Studio 2008 do not really offer any kind of extensibility or customization that would enable what you're trying to achieve.
There are a couple of options you could consider though:
Write your own Javascript language service. Obviously, this would be non-trivial, but it would allow you to get the precise behavior you're after. Language services are responsible for parsing the file to provide colorization, quick info, Intellisense, auto-completion, and other features to the core text editor. The simplest example of a language service is a sample in the Visual Studio 2008 SDK 1.1 called the RegExLangService. There is also a detailed walkthrough for the sample.
You could attempt implementing either an Add-in or a VSPackage which would insert/manipulate text in the editor based on the contents of the open document. Your question doesn't really say exactly what kind of behavior you need (other than dynamically generating a function). This would certainly be possible with the Visual Studio SDK and much less work than writing your own Javascript language service.
Good Luck!