Start Page Template VB

A new feature of Visual Studio 2010 is the ability to load a loose WPF XAML file in the Start Page tool window.  Users can now customize their Start Page either by adding elements to the existing Visual Studio 2010 Start Page or replacing the entire XAML for a completely different look.

This Visual Studio 2010 VB project template contains the actual XAML used in the Visual Studio 2010 RTM Start Page. This template XAML file can be modified and re-deployed as the user's custom Start Page. 

The project template also shows how to create a custom WPF UserControl and include it on a Start Page. The XAML and UserControl are then bundled into a Visual Studio VSIX for easy deployment to other computers and the Visual Studio Gallery.

Other features illustrated in this project template:

• Use the Visual Studio color service VSBrushes resources to set Start Page element colors.
• Access the running instance DTE object model available on the Start Page tool window DataContext.
• Utility methods to easily access the Visual Studio DTE object model and IServiceProvider interface in Utilities.vb.
• A wrapper class, StartPageSettings, for persisting user settings to the Visual Studio SettingsStore.  You can learn more about the Visual Studio SettingsStore from the SettingsStore walkthrough,http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff432842.aspx.

Note: This project template requires the Visual Studio SDK in order to create a VSIX deployment file.

The VS SDK is available here: /vsgallery/25622469-19d8-4959-8e5c-4025d1c9183d

Template type: Visual VB\Extensibility