Extending Visual Studio - Made Easy

One thing that always amazes me as I talk to scientists and researchers at shows like the recent Open Grid Forum or the last Super Computing conference is the extent to which they have managed to extend Eclipse to provide intuitive interfaces to their work. Up until very recently similar extensions for Visual Studio has required a significant investment in time to learn the VSIP extension API's which many researchers just don't have time to spare, however Pablo Galiano (Pablo has worked on many P&P projects including most recently the Service Factory) has changed that with the release of his VSIP Factory.

At the highest level, the VSIP Factory supports authoring, testing, and deploying (using WIX or standard VS setup projects) VSIP extensions. I sat in on a demo of this work last week and I guarantee you will be impressed. In less than one hour Pablo demonstrated how to create a brand new VSIP package, including several custom forms, wiring them up to menu's and appropriate events within VS, integrating them into the existing VS toolbars (including supporting docking behavior) and even modifying the VS splash screen, all using self-explanatory wizards. Then for the creme de la creme Pablo also shows how to build a similar package using a DSL based designer that he has worked on...

As anyone who has tried to do this with Visual Studio using the VSIP extensions surely knows - this is amazing stuff. So for anyone that is interested in extending Visual Studio I definitely recommend you take a look at Pablo's latest CTP. Enjoy....