SpicIE: A project with an Output Type of Class Library cannot be started directly.

Sometimes I get a debug start message “A project with an Output Type of Class Library cannot be started directly.”  while developing SpicIE based Internet Explorer plug-ins. It seems that the Visual Studio development environment sometimes forgets the debug settings and without that you get this message box.

To start/debug your project again you must simply enter the correct project debug properties. Open the project properties page and select the Debug tab. Select as “Start Action” “Start external program”. The external program which should be started is “c:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe”. In the textbox “Start Options” “Command line arguments” you simply enter “about:blank”.

If you project settings are set like below anything should work fine.

Happy debugging … GunnarD