Spam in the VS2010 Extension Manager - visual-studio-2010

What's with all the spam (free trials and so on from Component One & Telerik among others) in the VS 2010 Extensions Manager. Without going to the website there is no way to know whether a listing is free or trialware so, for me, the entire user experience of the Extensions Manager is ruined.
Anyone else finding this? Is there a way of suppressing these?
Alex...

One thing that helps slightly is to browse Tools specifically. I tried adding things like -trial or -componentone, but it seems that the extension manager/gallery ignores the -. I'll send an email to some people to see if that can be fixed.

If you go to the visual studio gallery web page, ( http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ ), on the left you can click on Categories, versions, and so forth that will filter out usless addin's.
For instance, I filter on VS 2010, and Free. This takes out paid, and Free Trial, such as the jerks at ComponentOne and Telerik.
Try: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/site/search?f%5B0%5D.Type=CostCategory&f%5B0%5D.Value=0&f%5B0%5D.Text=Free&f%5B1%5D.Type=VisualStudioVersion&f%5B1%5D.Value=10.0&f%5B1%5D.Text=Visual%20Studio%202010

Related

Visual Studio Sidebar Navigation

I am looking for free extension that has one simple functionality which is sidebar file navigation like is in SuperCharger or Resharper (see attached screenshots). Sadly both of them are paid :-( Does anyone have a good alternative?
Visual studio has Class View window for a quite a while.
You can try Productivity Power Tools, with it, you can:
Expand code files to navigate to its classes, expand classes to navigate to their members, and so on (C# and VB only)
Search your solution, all the way down to class members
Filter your solution or projects to see just opened files, unsaved files, and so on
View related information about classes and members (such as references or callers/callees for C#)
Preview images by hovering over them, or preview rich information by hovering over code items
We've also added support for multiple selection and drag & drop.
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=VisualStudioProductTeam.ProductivityPowerTools
I know its an old question, but as i was looking for an alternative to supercharger // Resharper (for the navigation only) few days ago, and had looked on stack before doing my search (and as I found the answers not exactly what i was looking for) ...
After testing a few extensions I finally found a good alternative to those two paid solutions :
https://github.com/sboulema/CodeNav/blob/master/README.md
You can also just download it from the extensions menu , search for CodeNav .
Best.

Cannot file build style on visual studio 2013

I want to open The Modify Style dialog box
Someone may know if this moved ?
I have try View->Toolbars-> and from here i cannot fine any style option
If you're talking about the Toolbars -> Style Sheet toolbar, it seems to have been removed intentionally:
Thanks for the feedback. The Stylesheet toolbar was removed because it
added little to no value with outdated wizards and dialogs. We're
looking at bringing more visual tooling back to CSS in the future, but
in a better way.
Regards, Mads Kristensen
Source: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/807167/vs-rc-ultimate-2013-missing-toolbar-style-sheet
Might be worth keeping an eye on this one as well (for further verification, it may get updated):
https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/808299/style-sheet-tool-bar-in-visual-studio-2013

Browsing Classes, Objects, etc

Question ONE:
I'm still pretty new to .net, but have used Visual Studio for a few recent projects. I'm now working a new project and I was wondering if visual studio had anything built in that would allow you to browse all of the details about a control, etc..
Is MSDN the best place to go for this?
For instance if I wanted to see of all the methods, properties, etc.. Is there anything inside VS?
Question TWO:
Can anyone recommend, books, resources, that deal specificially with Visual Studio? What each window does, etc.. I have used it enough to complete a few projects, but I haven't seen much in the way of exactly what everything does and why.
Thanks for any suggestions.
Use reflector (it's free!) to get in-depth information about classes etc. Visual studio also has a built-in Object Browser.
P.S. Reflector allows you to reverse engineer assemblies as well, allowing you to view the actual code of a class / method.
P.P.S. Google is still a developer's best friend. Need information on a control, search for it on the web. (Which will lead you to MSDN a lot of the times, but will also get you examples and loads of blog entries).
Question ONE:
You can use the Object Browser (menu View\Object Browser) to see a hierarchical list of all known assemblies, classes, interfaces, enums, etc...
This only gives the signature of each item and not the code.
If you want to see the code, use .Net reflector.
You can also use the Object Browser in Visual Studio. There is usually an icon for it at the top (by the Toolbox, Solution Explorer, etc. icons) or you can navigate to it (View -> Object Browser). When it opens, you will see all of the libraries currently referenced (system and third party) on the left hand side. It's hierarchical, so you can start drilling down. There is a search box at the top, if you want to look for a particular class, method or library. That looks at all the system libraries, not just the ones referenced in your current project.
For more help with the object browser, look here.
Q1:
In Visual Studio:
Above the editor there are 2 dropdown lists:
Left: Shows Classes
Right: Shows Class Members
or Click View > Class View: to see all the classes in the whole solution
I had a similar rub when I started using VS after I had done a lot of Java coding. I was used to the Java API documentation to research properties and such.
I found the VS equivalent IMO, here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229335.aspx
You can browse every class method, property, constructor, etc. right there. Their examples are decent.
In response to question 1, what I usually do is highlight the bit of framework code I'm interested in and hit F1 to bring up the documentation. For example:
Button myButton = new Button();
If you highlight the first Button and hit F1, you'll get an overview on Buttons in Windows Forms. If you highlight Button() and hit F1 you'll get the documentation on the Button class constructor.
In response to question 2, I'm not sure a book is the answer. I think reading a book on all the components of Visual Studio might be overkill. I'd say to keep on hacking away at your projects and page-fault information in via MSDN, Google, and StackOverflow as you need it. As with any IDE and framework, the more you use it the better you'll get at navigating and learning the ins and outs.

How do I write a custom start page for VS 2008?

I've looked around, and not found much documentation on this, so I thought I'd ask where all the experts hang out.
I would like to create a new start page, with bug tracking and source control interfaces, rather than the standard MSDN feed. I seem to remember that one can do more than just supply a different URL, but can actually implement a component to run as the start page, which needn't use web content. I may be wrong. Can anyone please give me some tips?
You can do is to create a DTE ToolWindow (read: Creating a ToolWindow hosting a .NET user control) and host your controls there, then its pretty easy to create an addin that will show the tool window as a document at runtime. (The same way that the start-up page looks)
Go to Tools > Options > Environment > Startup and put your RSS URL in the Start Page news channel field.
That should give you enough, but if you want to do more you can select open home page in the at startup dropdown and point it at a URL with the appropriate content. If you use an intranet with Windows authentication you could display user specific stuff.
This will be completely customizable in VS 2010. You'll be able to do anything you want to on the start page.

VS2008 Start Page replacement

I really don't like the VS2008 Start Page. I don't need the RSS reader, Getting started or Headlines. The only thing useful is "Recent Projects"
Is there a way to customize it or replace with a better one?
It will be nice that the page contains Favorites Projects and Recent projects.
P.S. I know that I can disabled it or replace it with other web page, just looking for a good productivity tip.
Here's an article with a lot of detail on how to precisely customize the start page. Unfortunately, it looks to be a rather arduous process. But hey, if you have the time...
Customizing the Visual Studio .NET 2003 Start Page
Goto Tools > Options > Environment > Startup and pick the best option you like
One suggestion would be to follow the steps here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford/archive/2008/01/03/did-you-know-how-to-customize-what-visual-studio-opens-to-or-how-to-make-the-start-page-not-show-up-when-vs-opens.aspx
You can also check out the useful information here. Aso for suggested things, check out this post.
The link posted by Kyralessa is a complete answer to your original question. Unfortunately, it does look like a complicated procedure.
I'll just add that if you're worried about any performance impact associated with fetching the RSS feed, you can enter a non-existent URL such as http://localhost:12345 that will fail quickly and reduce the amount of content needing to be rendered. In that way, you could keep the 'Recent projects' panel.
I too am not a fan of the startup page showing latest articles and news from MSDN.
I wouldn't mind glancing through a few articles, but the RSS feed is mega slow and the wait really slows down productivity, especially if I find myself opening and close it all the time.
Visual Studio will load much faster when the start page is disabled.
Here's how to do it:
Go to Tools => Options
Select the Startup child node under the Environment node.
Un-tick the auto loading of news articles
Clear the url box ...just to be sure ;)
Select "Show empty environment" from the combo box
Now, marvel at the dramatic speed boost to Visual studio 2008.

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