Carlos Quintero's blog

Back in VS.NET 2002/2003 the only way to change the style (Icon only, or Icon + Caption) of a CommandBarButton created from a Command was to cast the CommandBarControl returned by Command.AddControl to CommandBarButton and use the CommandBarButton.Style property. If you use that approach in VS 2010 Beta 2 you will find this bug that […]

This one happens when an add-in: Creates a temporary toolbar using CommandBars.Add Creates a temporary CommandBarPopup on that toolbar Creates a command and tries to add a CommandBarButton from that command to that CommandBarPopup using Command.Add(CommandBarPopup.CommandBar) The bug report is here: VS 2010 Beta 2 Bug: adding CommandBarButton from Command to CommandbarPopup on Toolbar causes […]

After 3 hours isolating this to the minimal expression (which is tedious if your add-in is has lots of user interface items and debugging a VS 2010 add-in on a virtual machine is painfully slow), here it is: VS 2010 Beta 2 Bug: deleting a CommandbarPopup unloading add-in causes VS to disappear https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=503093 (the problem […]

I can’t express how disappointed, frustrated (and more things!) I am with VS 2010 Beta 2 regarding correct behavior of commandbars for add-ins. It seems that once a bug is fixed in a VS 2010 build and an add-in can pass that point, new bugs surface that prevent its correct loading (and I have tested […]

Microsoft has reported that this problem will be fixed: ” ‘Object must be the same type as the enum’ exception calling CommandBars.Add from an add-in” http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=462766 Notice that the “Embed Interop Types” property seems to have been renamed to “Isolated” in VS 2010 Beta 2, in one of those renaming changes that make things more […]

FWIW, I have verified that VS 2010 Beta 2 certainly fixes the issue of supporting RGB=0,254,0 for transparent color in 24-bit command pictures that I mentioned here. So, if your add-in targets VS 2005, 2008 and 2010 you can use that color for the transparent background color of command pictures and they won’t appear with […]

This is going to be messy, so step by step: Imagine that you are developing an add-in that uses a temporary user interface (not permanent one), and creates a couple of commandbars of kind “toolbar”, and many commandbars of kind “popup” (with submenus). Since it uses a temporary user interface, it must delete those commandbars […]

If you are testing your add-in with the recently released VS 2010 Beta 2 chances are that you have noticed that the new WPF-based commandbars, buttons and icons are not yet ready for prime time. It seems that my MZ-Tools add-in uses every possible method, property and technique offered by the Microsoft.VisualStudio.CommandBars API so I […]

If you are developing add-ins for in-house use, chances are that you can drive, encourage or even force the whole organization to use the latest version of Visual Studio and therefore your add-in needs to target only that version. But if you are developing add-ins for commercial or open-source purposes, to be used by lots […]

As you know if you develop add-ins, Visual Studio 2005 introduced XML-based add-ins that use an .AddIn file that you must place in the proper folder for Visual Studio to show the add-in in the Add-In Manager. Which XML parser Visual Studio uses to parse .AddIn files wouldn’t be of interest if it wasn’t because […]