VSX Videos and Webcasts

See how to extend your development experience with VSX.

Videos

• VSX Architecture
  

  Doug Hodges (VSX_Architecture_Webcast.wmv, 96 minutes, 122MB)
  Extending the Visual Studio (VS) Integrated Development Environment (IDE) using the VS Package Architecture. For integrating commercial products, supporting new languages and participating as a 1st class citizen within the IDE, Visual Studio’s service and windowing architecture is exposed through a package model. Learn about building your own package and integrating with other services and packages within the environment in this 2 part session presented by one of Visual Studio’s original architects.

• Visual Studio 2008 SDK
  

  Deepankar Dubey (VS2008_SDK_Webcast.wmv, 47 minutes, 59MB)
  This webcast covers what's new in the Visual Studio 2008 SDK 1.0, the Visual Studio 2008 Shell, and some information about the VS SDK roadmap. CTC, which describes commands that are used and proffered by a VS package, are replaced by CTC in VS 2008 SDK. Also covered is RANU package development including experimental hive under HKCK, and admin rights are no longer needed to develop VS packages. Multi-framework targeting, Wizard updates, VB support, unit/integration test projects for packages, and more.

• Integrating Languages in the Visual Studio Shell
  

  Aaron Marten (3-06 - Visual Studio Shell - Aaron Marten.wmv, 43 minutes, 109MB)
  Introduction session from the 2008 Lang.NET Symposium on creating a new custom language service in Visual Studio and deploying with the Visual Studio Shell.

• Deploying VSX Projects
  

  Aaron Marten (Deploying_VSX_Projects_Webcast.wmv, 40 minutes, 276MB)
  This talk covers distributing various Visual Studio Extensibility components. Whether you are shipping a VSPackage, Add-in, Project Template, or Toolbox Control, check out this webcast for tips and tricks and to avoid common pitfalls with deploying your Visual Studio extensions, including several demos for these topics.

• Package Testing Framework
  

  Ole Preisler (Package_Testing_Framework_Webcast.wmv, 60 minutes, 76MB)
  In order to create high quality extensions for Visual Studio, you need automated testing of the functionality on different levels. The Package Testing Framework provides tools and API's to perform both unit testing and integration testing of Packages for Visual Studio integration. The user experience is nicely integrated into Visual Studio as peer test projects with your package project. This webcasts shows how automate package testing.

• DSL Tools
  

  Stuart Kent (DSL_Tools_Webcast.wmv, 76 minutes, 29MB)
  Visual Studio provides a great set of development tools out of the box. What many developers do not realize is that Visual Studio is also an open and extensible platform. Two key components of this platform are DSL Tools and the text templating framework. DSL Tools is used to create Visual Studio hosted designers for domain specific graphical languages, and the text templating framework is used to create generators that take various kinds of information as input and output text files which combine that information with boilerplate text in the templates. One use of text templates is to write code generators. This session shows how these two technologies can be combined to produce custom tools to support domain specific software development, where DSLs are used to create models which provide exactly the correct inputs to drive code generators built using text templates. The session will also explain how DSL Tools uses domain specific development itself for creating graphical designers, so includes a designer for designing DSLs and code generators that take a DSL definition as input and output the code that implement a designer hosted in Visual Studio.

• Extending DSLs
  

  Gareth Jones and Wojtek Kozaczynski (Extending_DSLs_Webcast.wmv, 55 minutes, 482MB)
  The Domain-Specific Language Tools for Visual Studio provide an expressive and powerful code-generation engine and a framework for model validation. Out-of-the-box, both of these features are geared towards getting a quick start on medium-scale projects, but they provide APIs to take them much further. Come learn how the patterns and practices team worked with the Visual Studio Extensibility team to build on those APIs to create a framework for large-scale code-generation and validation based on binary extensibility of DSLs.

• Sandcastle
  

  David Wright (Sandcastle_Webcast.wmv, 49 minutes, 62MB)
  An overview of Sandcastle, a set of tools for generating Microsoft documentation of managed reference code. This webcast takes you step by step through the building process and describe each function and option in detail.

Webcasts

• VSX: Extend Your Development Experience with Visual Studio 2008
  

  Ken Levy (MSDN Webcast, 60 minutes)
  The Microsoft Visual Studio development system is not only an industry-leading suite of development tools, it is also an open and extensible platform. Visual Studio supports a rich, diverse ecosystem of developers who ship thousands of Visual Studio—integrated products, from high-end process guidance tools to free PowerToys. The free Visual Studio software development kit (SDK) enables developers to build any number of extensions, from productivity tools to controls for embedded systems. With Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, two new offerings expand the scope of extensibility: the Visual Studio 2008 Shell and support for Domain-Specific Language (DSL) Tools in the SDK. In this webcast, we provide an overview of how you can use Visual Studio Extensibility, including the Visual Studio Shell and DSL Tools.

• Build Tools for Any Platform with the Visual Studio 2008 Shell
  

  James Lau (MSDN Webcast, 60 minutes)
  With the Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Shell, Visual Studio becomes a tool for almost any platform. Whether you are looking to build an "express" edition for your programming language product or you want to build an integrated development environment (IDE) for specialized control systems, the royalty-free Visual Studio Shell can help you cut costs and focus on your areas of expertise. In this session, we demonstrate how to use the Visual Studio Shell to build custom tools for a broad range of applications.

• Domain-Specific Development with Visual Studio DSL
  

  Gareth Jones (MSDN Webcast, 60 minutes)
  Microsoft Visual Studio provides a great set of built-in development tools, and an open and extensible platform. Two key components of this platform are Domain-Specific Language (DSL) Tools and the text templating framework. In this webcast, we show how these technologies can be combined to produce custom tools to support domain-specific software development, where DSLs are used to create models that provide exactly the correct inputs to drive code generators built using text templates. We also explain how DSL Tools use domain-specific development itself for creating graphical designers.

• Grow Your Business and Reach More Developers by Extending Visual Studio
  

  Shawn Nandi (MSDN Webcast, 74 minutes)
  Complete overview of the Microsoft Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP) program. Learn how the VSIP program can benefit independent software vendors (ISVs), systems integrators, academic institutions, corporations, or any developer interested in extending Visual Studio by integrating tools, components, and languages into the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE). We explain the technological guidance this program provides for advanced integration scenarios, and we cover community and technical support, Visual Studio licensing options, and co-marketing opportunities.

• Visual Studio Add-ins and Macros
  

  Craig Skibo (MSDN Webcast, 74 minutes)
  This webcasts shows how to control Visual Studio menus and commands programmatically through an automation object model, automating repetitive tasks, building additional functionality that integrates with your development process, and providing functional consistency across your team. We also cover tools and features included with Visual Studio that are especially useful from an automation standpoint, such as the macro recorder, macro editor and the add-in architecture.

• Do-It-Yourself Tools Inside Visual Studio
  

  Don Demsak (Momentum Webcast, 52 minutes)
  The Microsoft Visual Studio development system includes a great set of built-in development tools. But if Visual Studio does not have exactly the tool you need, you can always build one yourself. This webcast demonstrates how you can build customized tools inside Visual Studio to maximize its capabilities. We walk through the process of developing a package written in managed code using an example written in Microsoft Visual C#. The managed package we use as our example is from the open-source project XPathmania, which was the winner of the Microsoft Visual Studio Extensibility Plug-in contest in the managed package category. XPathmania extends Visual Studio XML Editor by adding support to test your XPath queries against the open XML document. Attend this session to learn how to begin creating your own development tools.

Channel 9

• Ken Levy and Aaron Marten: Visual Studio 2008 Extensibility
  

  (51 minutes)
  Ken and Aaron talk about the new features for extensibility in Visual Studio 2008 and the Visual Studio 2008 SDK including: How you can build your own IDE with the Visual Studio Shell. How you could create your own language service using Babel. How to plug into editor features like IntelliSense for statement completion. How to build your own "Hello World" tool Window.

• Anthony Cangialosi and Ken Levy: Visual Studio Gallery
  

  (25 minutes)
  Interview and demos with Anthony Cangialosi and Ken Levy from the Visual Studio Extensibility team to talk about the newly launched site for finding Visual Studio extensions, www.visualstudiogallery.com. You'll also see Ken walk through using two cool, free extensions that you can download from the gallery, StickyNotes and the Source Code Outliner PowerToy.

• Doug Hodges: The History of Visual Studio Extensibility
  

  (46 minutes)
  Doug Hodges, a Principal Software Architect on the Visual Studio platform team, is interviewed by Ken Levy discussing the history of the Visual Studio IDE. Doug is often referred to as the father (or cool uncle) of the original Visual Studio IDE shell. The text transcript for this interview is available in the online edition of VSX edition of CoDe Focus magazine. Additional information about the VS SDK and VS Shell can be found at http://msdn.com/vsx.