Product DescriptionDetermined to make the Visual Studio Extensibility (VSX) learning process as smooth as possible, this helpful resource shows you how to use VSX in order to facilitate easier development of Microsoft programming languages and development technologies. Keyvan Nayyeri examines how VSX simplifies the processes of coding, compilation, deployment, debugging, and testing. Plus, numerous examples, sample code, and real-world case studies demonstrate the various extensibility options of VSX so that you can perform routine tasks easier and quicker.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Not much here
I'm not sure what the basic idea for the book was; to provide a summary of some (not anywhere near all) the features of the Visual Studio SDK or to serve as an introduction to using the SDK?
In any case, the book is mostly filler. The few examples are always trivial ones like hooking up a button or printing a message somewhere. I think I learned more about the capabilities of the SDK from reading the (argh!) actual SDK doc intros than from reading this entire book.
Rating: - Good Book
Keyvan Nayyeri explores each of the areas of VS Extensibility. He breaks the book up into logical sections, first illustrating the API that Visual Studio uses to represent the user interface. If you have never looked at the API for Visual Studio before, it's not user friendly, so it was good that he provided a brief description of the properties and methods for the various objects, followed by a few examples using those objects to perform certain tasks.
Rating: - A good introduction.
This is one of those difficult books to review because it attempts to cover a huge topic. Overall it provides a good overview of Visual Studio extensibility but if you want to really use it you're going to have to dive into the MSDN documentation and browse the source on CodePlex (Iron Python and Iron Python Studio are a must). Some topics, such as DSLs and MSBuild have other books dedicated to them.
Unfortunately, due to the depth of the topic, a lot of the chapters are simple introductions ... Read More
Rating: - Wide, but shallow
Covers all aspects of VS extensibility, but in a shallow way. Its not surprising, considering the page count and the number of different ways you can extend and use Visual Studio.
The book concentrates more on addins than other points of extensibility. So if you're looking at creating an addin, or some other not-too-complex work (such as visualizers) this is a good starting point.
If you are looking to do some heavy lifting, such as creating VS packages, you won't get much more than ... Read More
Rating: - Great so far, especially the objective tone
I just ordered the book from Amazon after a careful search online and in bookstores. This was the only in-depth text that covers the topic of extending Visual Studio in all its manifestations be they macros, add-ins or other extension strategies. Team leads, configuration managers and toolsmiths in Windows development environments will not want to miss this.
Anyway, then I saw a copy on a shelf at the local bookseller, so I read the first chapter and skimmed most of the chapters. I'm writing a review ... Read More
- Not much here
- Good Book
- Wide, but shallow
- Great so far, especially the objective tone
