Is there any way to associate a web page with a project in Visual Studio, and have it load up in the IDE? For example, I have a project who's task list is maintained on a web site. It would be ideal to see those tasks within the IDE instead of a separate page. I can accomplish that now by following these steps:
Press Ctrl-Alt-R to open a Web Browser page
Change the URL to my desired path
Position the page as desired (like in its own tab group, off to the right of my code)
It would be nice to have a link somewhere in my project that I could click and open this page in the IDE without changing the URL every time. I have several different projects that would benefit from this. Any ideas?
Something like this happens with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server. The various documents and guidance associated with your current Team Project area accessible from within Visual Studio, in the Team Explorer window.
You can also create a Guidance Package to apply various commands and pieces of documentation at appropriate places within your projects. see Guidance Automation Extensions and Guidance Automation Toolkit.
Nice idea. The only thing that I can think of is via Visual Studio Extensibility. Basically,
Define an MSBuild property in the project file or a custom field in the solution file that has the project url.
Write a VS package that subscribes to the solution load event or something similar (I am not familiar with VS object model but I am sure there is an event like that) and looks for that custom field and extracts the url if it exists in the solution or the project file and then opens a web browser within VS that points to that url.
Here's my quick hack around this problem:
Create a text file in the project. I called my "notes.txt", and I use it to store notes, ideas, etc. that don't have a home elsewhere in the project.
Add the web link to the top of the file.
Open the text file in the IDE and put it in a new tab group. I put mine in a vertical tab group off to the right.
Drag the separator as far over as it will go to "hide" the tab group. This way it's always open and available but not taking up much space.
When you want the web page, "show" the tab group (i.e. drag the separator back) and ctrl-click the link.
This has the added benefit of opening the web page in the same tab group as the text file, so you can push them both aside when not using them.
I'm sure there's more that could be done by writing packages as others have suggested, but this was a low-effort way to get me close enough to what I wanted. I'd love to hear other suggestions or modifications that might make this setup better.
Related
I am trying to create an extension for Team Explorer window in VS2017.
I want to put another button on the changes screen, or even hook into the commit method, so that I can take the comments, and integrate with a Kanbanize board.
It seems like it should be possible to but a button onto the Team Explorer window, but there doesn't seem to be any documentation I can find, or examples.
I have looked around and can only really find this link below, which I tried but doesn't seem to work, but isn't really what I am wanting to do.
https://hamidshahid.blogspot.com/2017/09/extending-team-explorer-in-vs2017.html
The Team Explorer extensibility is designed to enable adding new sections to an existing page, but altering the existing sections to change their UI/behavior is not allowed. Given this design constraint, you can add your own UI, but it'll need to be in a separate section. You should be able to read the selection data from other sections on the Git Changes page via IChangesExt.
Hope this helps.
Background
I am working with VB6 legacy code and I am using an external editor because of the features that it has. Unfortunately, those changes aren't refreshed in the IDE because VB6 doesn't monitor loaded code for changes.
I have done some extensive searching on the subject including looking for alternative editors, a fairly exhaustive internet search including following all of the links on this StackExchange link and haven't found a way to refresh the code window to reflect the external file changes.
My company doesn't have access to the latest edition of Visual Studio and will not be purchasing it anytime in the near future. Until then, there is code to fix.
Question
Aside from restarting the program are there any methods that can be used to refresh the code displayed in the VB6 editing window?
Check out vbAdvance add on. It will prompt you to reload source file in case of external modification.
I think a found one possible solution.
The MZ-Tools set has an function called Reload file from Disk. It also allowed me to create a shortcut for this function through the MZ-Tools options menu, so I assigned it to the shortcut keys of my choosing.
It's a solution, but I'm still looking for anything that might be better.
I'd like to create an extension for Visual Studio 2010. The functionalities I need are these:
Add a context menu item for Project (when user right clicks project name in his solution, he'll get my context item in the list).
When he clicks, a new WinForms form appears, where he can input some data, and an option to save that data for future reuse.
When he clicks OK on that Form I'll generate some files and add those files to be a part of his project that he rightclicked.
The WSCF.blue is exactly the kind of behaviour I want to immitate in VS, but it's source was written in VS2008, and I'd like to use VS2010 Extension options which are quite changed as I understand...
I found some resources on the msdn, but I found it confusing with incomplete info (e.g. MenuAndCommands example).
Can anyone shed some light on how to achieve what I'm after?
I really don't know where to point out so you can get specific examples of what you are trying to achieve. However, in the following resources you will find complete and detailed information about the overall process, and some help to achieve 1. and 2.
VS 2010 Package Development – Chapter 1: Visual Studio Packages
VS 2010 Package Development – Chapter 2: Commands, Menus and Toolbars
I often create several sub domains of a web project, such as blog.domain.com, www.domain.com and example.domain.com. Typically I set these projects up within a single solution, along with any common class libraries, and assign each a static port number. To view a specific site I right click a file in the solution explorer and "View in browser".
I'm working on a project with multiple MVC2 projects under VS 2010. I seem to have lost the ability to "View in browser" from the context menu of a file, so I need to use the Set as start up project for a specific site, then Ctrl F5 to view a site. Workable but frustrating.
Is there a better way to manage multiple common sections of a site as different sites, or reason I can no longer see "View in browser" from the context menu?
I've just discovered "Multiple Startup Projects" under the properties of the solution. Not an ideal fix, but it saves me switching start up projects. It opens a Development Server for each project, and loads each site into a separate browser window when I ctrl F5.
When developing in a VS2005+ with C# project and I right click on a framework method/property/type and select ‘Go To Definition’, by default we get a new locked tab with code that has been generated from the framework, labelled appropriately [from metadata].
However when we do the same in a VB.NET project, you get taken to a new tab with the relevant Object Browser view.
This has always struck me as peculiar and was hoping there was a good reason behind it. IMO the object browser is nicer.
Is there a logical reason for the difference in default visual studio behaviour? If so, what is it?
It's a choice each team made based on what they believe their respective customers wanted to see. VB users have a historical attachment to the object browser and many VB features are integrated into it (Go To Def being one of them). C# made a switch in VS2005 to generate metadata on the fly for their version of GoTo def because they believed their customers would like the behavior better.
You can install Resharper for this.
It'll allow you to choose the default behavior when clicking the "go to definition".