VSX Videos and Webcasts

See how to extend your development experience with VSX.

Unable to attend this year's 2008 Developer Conference? Session videos are now available on Channel 9. Scroll down below for a complete list of session content.

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.

Channel 9-Hosted 2008 Developer Conference Videos

• VS Extensibility Architecture: Intro & Advanced Topics
  

  (Speaker: Doug Hodges, Principal Architect, Microsoft)
  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.
  

• Building Custom Tools with Visual Studio 2008 Shell
  

  (Speaker: James Lau, Senior Program Manager Lead, Microsoft)
  Do you want to consolidate your organization’s software tools into a single environment for either internal or external use? Do you want to create an integrated vertical market toolset inside a world-class IDE? If your answer is yes to either of the above, you need to learn more about the Visual Studio Shell product. Visual Studio Shell is a new offering in Visual Studio 2008. With this new product, tools developers can now easily build their own customized IDE on the same platform that Visual Studio is built on; royalty free. In this session, we will walk through how to build a custom IDE with the Shell. You will walk away inspired to build your own IDE on this new platform!

• From Hobby To Profit – How to Market Your Extensions
  

  (Speaker: Joe Marini, Director, Microsoft)
  Have you been thinking about how you might be able take your Visual Studio Extension from a free download to a profitable product? Microsoft has a variety of resources that supports the ecosystem of VSX developers. From the free Visual Studio Gallery to the co-marketing benefits that come with being a member of the VSIP program you'll learn about the various ways to take advantage of what Microsoft has to offer.

• The VSXtra Community Project: Driving Toward a New Visual Studio Managed Package Framework
  

  (Speaker: Istvan Novak, VSX Insider, Grepton Informatics)
  In this session, you’ll be introduced to the current state and results of an experimental community project codenamed “VSXtra” (http://www.codeplex.com/VSXtra). This project enumerates many patterns that drive toward a new and improved Managed Package Framework using the great pillars of the current .NET Framework like metadata, generics, LINQ, C#3.0 syntax, etc.

• Domain-Specific Development with Visual Studio DSL Tools
  

  (Speaker: Jean-Marc Prieur, Program Manager, Microsoft)
  Domain-Specific Language Models are a powerful technique for embodying in a tool the abstractions specific to the software your business is building and guidance on how to use them with your own frameworks.  In this session we will  examine the domain-specific development pattern, and see how to build a simple graphical language from scratch. You will also learn how to make your graphical language domain-specific and finally how to add architectural guidance directly to the tool.

• Apples and Oranges or Fruit Salad? A Look at Open Source Versus Commercial Platform Strategies
  

  (Speaker: Tim Wagner, Principal Development Lead, Microsoft)
  The speaker, a former Eclipse Web Tool Platform Project lead now working with the Microsoft Visual Studio Platform team, takes a look at the differences and (surprising) similarities of the Eclipse platform strategy and that of Visual Studio. The talk examines licensing and pricing models and how choices for the platform affect both end user adoption and add-in provider opportunities. Deep focus by the Eclipse Foundation on enabling add-in providers through EPIC and other mechanisms bears a strong similarity to the way large commercial vendors such as Microsoft build partner programs, including marketing support, lead generation, and other conventional business activities. Recent changes by the Visual Studio Ecosystem team to make the platform easier to extend and adopt are clearly informed by success in the open source world and are evolving to look increasingly like it. We will also examine membership pricing and look at the impact different membership classes (such as Strategic Developers in Eclipse and Premier Partners in Visual Studio) affect the course of the platform and its tools. Finally, we'll take a brief look at innovation drivers and rates of change in an attempt to answer the question of how (and whether) open versus commercial development affects the evolution of the underlying platform.

• How I Extend Visual Studio
  

  (Speakers: Members of the VSIP Program and VSX Community)
  Members of the Visual Studio community will share how they leverage Visual Studio to deliver valuable products for their customers and make their development process more productive. You’ll see demos & presentations from a variety partners & community members in a fast paced fun session.

• How to Extend Visual Studio and Become a More Productive Developer
  

  (Speaker: Pablo Galiano, VSX Insider, Clarius Consulting)
  Discover the most common extensibility points that Visual Studio offers and learn how to use them to improve your every day development. You will learn how to add commands, tool windows, transverse the solution explorer and code model hierarchies, listen to Visual Studio events, Visual Studio selection mechanism and more. We will develop a number of sample scenarios during the demo that will improve your productivity.

• Visual Studio Add-ins, Templates and Wizards
  

  (Speaker: Gabor Ratky, VSX Insider, EPAM Systems)
  A look at how to extend Visual Studio with Add-ins, Templates and Wizards.

• VSX: Extend Your Development Experience
  

  (Speakers: Jean-Marc Prieur, Program Manager, Microsoft, and James K. Lau, Senior Program Manager Lead, Microsoft)
  Visual Studio provides a great set of development tools out of the box, but you may be surprised at how much more you can do with its rich extensibility platform. In this introductory session, we will give you a whirlwind tour of what the Visual Studio Extensibility (VSX) platform has to offer and how you can take advantage of it. Whether you are looking to increase you development team’s productivity, or you are looking for new business opportunities on the Visual Studio platform, this technical session will help you get started.

• Deploying VSX Projects
  

  (Speaker: Aaron Marten, Software Developer, Microsoft)
  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.

• Advanced Code Generation Patterns with T4 & DSL Tools
  

  (Speakers: Gareth Jones, Senior Software Developer, Microsoft, Jean-Marc Prieur, Program Manager, Microsoft, and Oleg Sych, Senior Lead Consultant, Catapult Systems)
  Code generation is an increasingly common technique in application development and forms a part of many Visual Studio extensions. With the addition of T4 to Visual Studio 2008, every developer has a powerful code generation engine available to them. In this session we'll look at patterns of usage of T4 and ways to structure your templates for large-scale reuse. We'll explore a sample that aids large scale code generation from DSL models and finally look at a community library which adds facilities to make the tricky problems of incremental code generation and reverse engineering from a DSL easier.

• Extending ASP.NET MVC with Custom HTML Helpers
  

  (Speaker: Stephen Walther, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft)
  Microsoft ASP.NET MVC is Microsoft's newest framework for building agile, loosely coupled, highly testable web applications. ASP.NET MVC is an alternative, but not a replacement, for the current ASP.NET Web Forms Framework. Because ASP.NET MVC is a new framework, there are exciting opportunities for creating new extensions to the underlying framework. In this talk, you learn how to create new HTML Helpers for ASP.NET MVC. An HTML Helper is the equivalent of an ASP.NET control in the new world of ASP.NET MVC. 

• Beyond VS Packages - Adding Value with Blueprints
  

  (Speaker: Jack Greenfield, Senior Director, Microsoft)
  Are you building VS packages or Visual Studio components? Would you like to create holistic experiences, where developers can rapidly build specific types of components, applications or systems? Come and hear how you can take your business to the next level by building sets of integrated Visual Studio extensions called Blueprints that define and automate domain specific development processes. 

• VSX: The Debugging Automation Model
  

  (Speaker: Laura Petersen)
  Learn the basics of the debugger automation model and how you can start extending it.

• Extending Visual Studio 2008 Team Test
  

  (Speaker: Bruce Taimana)
  Extending Visual Studio 2008 Team Test.

• Client and Server Extensibility in Team Foundation
  

  (Speaker: Bill Essary)
  In this session we will take a close look at Team Foundation Server (TFS) extensibility points. Extensibility on the client side can significantly influence the user experience, but it can be hard to manage. Server side extensibility can help add new tools to Visual Studio Team System (VSTS), to create new integration solutions on top of TFS or to build bridges to existing systems. We will survey extensibility points available in TFS today and will work through the development of a sample that uses the most common client and server side extensibility points in this session. You will leave the session with a solid understanding of the opportunities available to customize and extend TFS.

• Adding Value to Team Foundation Server
  

  (Speaker: Pieter de Bruin)
  Team Foundation Server (TFS) is the server component of Microsoft's Application Lifecycle Management solution. We all know TFS for its version control and work items functionality. TFS is also a great platform to extend for a specific organization or to sell including your own ALM additions. In this session we will focus on creating add-ons for TFS. We will start by briefly talking about customizing and extending TFS and then diving into specific extensibility scenarios for core TFS components and managing TFS installations.

• The Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Database Project Ecosystem: Integrating ALM and Database Tools via Extensibility
  

  (Speakers: Graham Barry, Senior Program Manager Lead, Microsoft and Mairead O'Donovan, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft)
  Discover how Visual Studio Team System code name "Rosario": Database Edition empowers developers to actively participate in, and bring agility to, the database development process. If you work with databases, you will want see how the features offered by the latest addition to Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) integrate the database developer into the Application Development Lifecycle. This exciting product is changing the way database developers work with databases forever, by moving the "One Version of the Truth" for database schema from the production server into source control. This presentation focuses on extending the "Rosario" release of Database Edition to enable non SQL Server databases to plug into the VSTS Database Edition platform. Now database developers can manage their database schema changes for Microsoft SQL Server databases as well as non SQL Server databases within the same environment. In addition to enabling an extension platform for non SQL Server databases, learn also how the Visual Studio Team System code name "Rosario": Database Edition has enabled a database development tools extensibility platform for third-party companies to plug in additional database development tools into the VSTS Database Edition product.