Pedro Silva's Blog
Development lead on Visual Studio Platform team focusing on the extensibility of Visual Studio.
Cool Extension: Modeling Feature Pack
Microsoft just recently released the Visualization and Modeling Feature Pack for Visual Studio 2010...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 06/18/2010
Cool Extension: VS2010 Pro Power Tools
We've just released the new Pro Power Tools which is a collection of useful extensions to make your...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 06/11/2010
Extension Manager Feedback
Now that Visual Studio 2010 is available, it would be great to get more feedback on the new...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 06/02/2010
Nice Review of the Extension Manager
Chris wrote a nice review of the VS2010 Extension Manager feature at TechRepublic. Having worked on...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 06/01/2010
Cool Extension: Extension Analyzer
Have you ever created a VS Package, tried to run it in Visual Studio only to get the infamous...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 05/27/2010
Creating Custom StartPage Extensions
I've been working on a custom start page sample that creates a new tab on the typical Visual Studio...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 05/05/2010
Cool Extension: Power Commands for VS 2010
For all of you fans of the Power Commands extension, Lance, from our team, just updated this...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 05/04/2010
How To: Launch a URL in the Visual Studio Internal Browser
For the sample extension that I'm working on, I wanted to have the ability to launch a URL in Visual...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 04/26/2010
How To: Get a ServiceProvider from the VS Start Page
When working with Visual Studio extensibility, getting a ServiceProvider is the main way to find and...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 04/21/2010
Cool Extension: Custom Start Page Template
For those that have seen Visual Studio 2010, there is a fancy new start page that is much more...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 04/19/2010
Visual Studio 2010 and SDK are available
After 2+ years in development, Visual Studio 2010 became generally available today. Also available...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 04/12/2010
Visual Studio 2010 and SDK RC released
Today is the general release for the Visual Studio 2010 RC. There's been a lot of performance work...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 02/10/2010
Cool Extension: New Export Template
This is a new tool that will make creation and packaging of project and item templates a whole lot...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 01/18/2010
Cool Extension: SQL Azure Explorer
I was just looking through some new extensions on the Visuals Studio Gallery for VS2010 Beta 2 and...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 11/06/2009
Visual Studio 2010 SDK for Beta 2 Now Available!
The Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 SDK is now available for everyone to use from the Download Center. So,...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 10/21/2009
Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Available
We announced today the availability of the Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 on MSDN. Later this week, on...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 10/19/2009
Cool Extension: Vim Emulation
Jared just released a cool new editor extension for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 to provide Vim editor...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 09/09/2009
Online Templates for the New Project Dialog
ScottGu recently posted about the new online templates feature of the Visual Studio 2010 Beta1. The...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 08/28/2009
New Project templates of VS-MEF integration
Pablo Galiano has just published two you project template extensions for the Visual Studio Gallery,...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 07/13/2009
MPF for Projects released for VS 2010 Beta 1
Chuck England has just recently posted the sources for MPF for Projects on CodePlex. If you're...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 07/09/2009
Look Ma, No More PLKs!
For those of you trying out Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1, you may have already noticed... But, Visual...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 06/19/2009
Update to AboutBox Extension
I recently posted an update the the WPF AboutBox (CS) extension (v 0.4) on the VS Gallery. You can...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 06/10/2009
Aaron Posts on VSIX Project and pkgdef Files
Aaron (one of the developers on my team working on the SDK) just wrote a couple of great posts for...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 06/09/2009
Creating an Item Template Extension (Addendum)
There are a couple of other ways to create project/item template extensions besides using the VSIX...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 06/08/2009
Creating an Item Template Extension (Part 3)
The VSIX file we created in Part 2 is the new unit of deployment for extension in Visual Studio...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 06/07/2009
Creating an Item Template Extension (Part 2)
Now, that we have a zipped up item template (from Part 1), how do we get this thing ready for the VS...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 06/04/2009
Creating an Item Template Extension (Part 1)
I’ve put together a WPF AboutBox item template and released it on the Visual Studio Gallery. It’s...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 06/03/2009
Quick Tutorial on Building Extensions with the VS SDK
It's pretty cool when you General Manager is out working with the bits you just released. Jason just...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 06/02/2009
New Template Extension on the Gallery
I just created an new Item Template for the WPF AboutBox that I've been discussing in this blog. The...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 05/28/2009
The DSL Beta1 SDK is out!
Well lots of announcements this week with the VS Beta coming out... so here's one more: The Visual...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 05/22/2009
Early Buzz on the VS SDK and Extension Manager
Well for the first couple of days of being out, we've been getting some good usage and feedback of...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 05/21/2009
Visual Studio 2010 SDK Beta 1 Available!
It pays to be in early in the morning... sometimes you get to be the first to announce. :) The...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 05/21/2009
Visual Studio 10 Beta1 Available!
The Visual Studio 10 Beta1 is generally available today from MSDN's Download Center... get it while...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 05/20/2009
Coming Soon Visual Studio 10 Beta 1
Well if JasonZ can blog about it, I suppose that means I can too. :) He talks about some changes in...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 05/14/2009
WpfAboutBox: Dialog Layout and Styles
I wanted to make an AboutBox that is as easy to use as the one that comes with Winforms. But, I also...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 05/08/2009
WpfAboutBox: Intro
I've been testing out some of the different possibilities in WPF with a sample AboutBox -- every...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 05/06/2009
Programmatic Access to XmlDataProvider
It’s pretty easy to set up an XmlDataProvider as a resource in your WPF application. This lets you...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 05/04/2009
Windows 7 RC is out
The Windows 7 Release Candidate just came out yesterday. I've been using builds of Win7 on my laptop...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 05/01/2009
Changing blog layout
Well, I tried using a prettier stylesheet layout for my blog, but it's not very good at should code....
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 04/29/2009
A WPF Dialog Window
I’m continuing to work through learning more about WPF and XAML. I was trying a simple dialog and...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 04/27/2009
Comic Sans typeface
Apparently there's quite an upheaval over the Comic Sans typeface... with folks even wishing to ban...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 04/22/2009
Low Bandwidth MSDN Pages
I just read over on Scott Hanselman's blog that there's a new low bandwidth view of MSDN pages. This...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 04/20/2009
WPF LinkLabel
WPF doesn't have a built in LinkLabel control as you'd find in WinForms. But, I have found a couple...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 04/17/2009
An old friend talking about Perf
I was just reading over some blogs and ran across a couple of interesting topics on usage and perf...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 04/15/2009
Learning WPF
I'm finally starting down the path of learning WPF (yes, I know that I'm a little late to the party...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 04/14/2009
Happy Easter
Had a really good week talking with a lot of customers at our VSIP clinic. Met a lot of the folks...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 04/10/2009
VSIP Developer Clinic Next Week
There's a VSIP Developer Clinic here in Redmond next week (Mon-Wed). I'll be attending and looking...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 04/03/2009
Introducing VS Extension Manager
In case you missed it, Jason Zander posted a while back about the Visual Studio 2010 new look. In...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 04/02/2009
T4 Editor Beta Released
The folks at Clarius have an update to their T4 template editor. They're now in Beta. It's a very...
Author: Pedro Silva [Visual Studio] Date: 10/18/2007