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Extending Visual Studio Overview

The Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) provides the user interface (UI) for standard components, such as compilers, editors, and debuggers. Features like Visual C++ and Visual Basic that are included with Visual Studio are themselves extensions of the IDE. The Visual Studio SDK provides tools, samples, wizards, designers, and documentation that helps you develop your own applications that extend the IDE and integrate seamlessly with it.

In This Section

  • Visual Studio Software Development Kit (SDK)
    Provides a gateway to documentation, samples, and code to help you develop products that integrate with the Visual Studio product family.

  • Visual Studio
    Discusses how to develop applications by using Visual Studio. Includes sections about how to extend the Visual Studio IDE by using add-ins.