I can't believe I've been writing packages for Visual Studio and didn't know about the series of blog articles on Visual Studio Exensibility by DiveDeeper or about the VSXtra project. Since I want a quick index of the LearnVSXNow! series, I'm posting links to every article. This is a series every managed package framework developer should read.

LearnVSXNow!

How to start VSX programming?
Creating an empty package
Creating a package with a simple command
Creating a package with a tool window
Basic VSX ideas
Creating our first toolset — Prolog
Creating our first toolset — Finishing the sample
Intermezzo — The regpkg.exe utility
Creating our first toolset — Refactoring to a service
Creating our first toolset — Reusing code
Testing a package
Stepping forward: “VsxLibrary” and “HowToPackage”
Menus and comands in VS IDE
Basics of the .vsct file
Creating a simple custom editor — the basics
Creating a simple custom editor — the first ten meter
Creating a simple custom editor — under pressure
Advanced VSCT concepts
PowerCommands Deep Dive — Command Architecture
PowerCommands Deep Dive — Commands and UI
PowerCommands Deep Dive — Analyzing Commands
Thinking about a new MPF
Coping with GUIDs
Introducing VSXtra
Advanced VSCT Concepts: Behind Combos
Services — with no-code service initialization
Multiple Tool Windows
VSXtraCommands Part 1 — Command handling patterns
VSXtraCommands Part 2 — Commands removing recent items
Custom Editors in VSXtra
Merging Package Menus with VSCT
VSXtra at DevCon - Part 1
VSXtra at DevCon - Part 2
Working with Hierarchies Part 1 - Hierarchy Basics
Working with Hierarchies Part 2 - Internal Structure of Hierarchies
Working with Hierarchies Part 3 - Properties and Hierarchy Traversal
Meet Visual Studio 2010 and the New VS SDK 2010 CTP
VS 2010 Editor - Text Coloring Sample Deep Dive
Working with Hierarchies Part 4 - Hierarchy Windows
Working with Hierarchies Part 5 - Managed Classes for Custom Hierarchies
Toolbar Layout and Persistence

Sidebar

If you're creating toolbars and menus for Visual Studio, the only way to get a crisp icon for the item is to use a 32-bit bitmap, which is a 24-bit bitmap plus an 8-bit alpha channel. Unlike lower bit levels, 32-bit bitmaps support transparency which prevent your icons from looking like a box. Worse still, I discovered that using 24-bit bitmaps creates artifacts in the form of little black dots when rendered.

Unfortunately, unless you have a license to Photoshop, you may discover that none of your tools create 32-bit bitmaps. I don't have a Photoshop license at work so I use Paint.NET to do my graphical work (which is great in most of my scenarios). Here's what the Paint.NET author had to say about why 32-bit bitmaps aren't supported: "GDI+ just refuses to cooperate in allowing me to do that."

Luckily, I found a free tool, AlphaConv, that will convert png files to 32-bit bmp files. My process is as follows.

1) Create a png in Paint.NET with 32-bit Bit Depth.

2) Drag and drop the png into AlphaConv with Target format set to .bmp.

3) Copy the resulting bmp file to my project directory, compile my application.

Mike Ormond has announced that Visual Studio Beta 1 (including .NET Fx 4.0)  will be available to MSDN subscribers later today.

He also posted a few screenshots. I admit that I'm somewhat saddened by the removal of the triangles.

Visual Studio Team System is getting a new tool: Microsoft Test and Lab Manager. It was codenamed Camano and announced last year at PDC08, but new details have emerged via Jason Zander's blog. The tool will not only be included with Visual Studio Team Test since generalist testers (think domain experts rather than programmers) may not want to install the rather large Visual Studio on their testing boxes. The tool will also be included in Visual Studio Team Test 2010 Essentials and Visual Studio Lab Management 2010.

Visual Studio® Team Test 2010	Support for the specialist tester including Web and load testing capabilities in addition to the ability to create automated test suites.  Executes in the Visual Studio environment for test professionals.  Comes with Microsoft Test and Lab Manager.
Visual Studio® Team Test 2010 Essentials	Support for the generalist tester including the ability to manage test cases and manual/automated test execution.  Installs as a scaled down product for easy access on test machines.
Visual Studio® Lab Management 2010	Support for creating virtualized environments with snapshot capabilities.  You can now execute your tests using the lab capabilities and save the state later for both development and test usage.

It has some pretty interesting features. Ever notice how difficult it can be to test the UI? Well, Camano has UI navigation automation that supports WinForms, WPF. and html. Testers will now be able to send the developers a historical debug log when a problem occurs. It can even analyze TFS checkins to determine which test cases are affected.

I think this is going to make life a lot easier for the .NET testers out there.