UI Design Guidelines
The Visual Studio SDK includes user interface (UI) guidelines so that developers can match the UI of the Visual Studio 2008 integrated development environment (IDE).
An IDE must provide users a consistent, predictable UI. A standard UI provides a seamless user experience, shortens learning curves, and lowers the total cost of ownership. The Visual Studio 2008 IDE enables flexible design of VSPackage interfaces. UI design guidelines offer a framework for uniformly designing and implementing interface technologies into the IDE.
Visual Studio UI guidelines are located in Visual Studio SDK installation path\VisualStudioIntegration\Best Practices\.
Nota
These guidelines address UI design standards for Visual Studio 2008 and do not represent a comprehensive UI design reference. For more complete guidelines on designing and implementing the Windows UI, see The Windows User Experience in the MSDN Library.