The Code Project Browser Add-in for Visual Studio

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I received an email today through my blog from one of the developers at SlickEdit, who also happens to be a member of The Code Project community, letting me know about a new Visual Studio Add-in they have developed. You may remember I blogged about the free SlickEdit Gadgets, a really great set of Add-ins for Visual Studio.

 

Since I am also a member of The Code Project community, I spend a lot of time on the web site answering forum questions and reading the articles posted. I also spend a lot of time in Visual Studio. Thanks to this new Add-in, I can browse The Code Project directly in Visual Studio. I know that I can do this without the Add-in, but the Add-in provides some additional features:

  1. You can download files directly into a “My Documents\My Code Project Samples” directory, where they will be automatically unzipped and loaded into the IDE.
  2. You can view, reload and delete all of the projects you’ve downloaded through a sidebar.
  3. You can keep a list of favorite articles.

The Add-in currently only installs for Visual Studio 2005, but it will run with Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2. In order to run it, you need to follow these steps:

  1. Install the Add-in using the MSI installer for VS2005.
  2. Copy the CPBrowser.AddIn file from the folder to the folder. (You might need to create this directory under the Visual Studio 2008 folder first.)
  3. Change the following items (in bold italics) in the CPBrowser.AddIn file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16" standalone="no"?>
<Extensibility xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/AutomationExtensibility">
    <HostApplication>
        <Name>Microsoft Visual Studio Macros</Name>
        <Version>9.0</Version>
    </HostApplication>
    <HostApplication>
        <Name>Microsoft Visual Studio</Name>
        <Version>9.0</Version>
    </HostApplication>
    <Addin>
        <Assembly>C:\Program Files\Code Project Browser\VS2008\CPBrowser.dll</Assembly>
    </Addin>
</Extensibility>

They are currently working on an installer for Visual Studio 2008 so you don’t have to do the manual steps. They are also looking to add the following features:

One other feature requested was a progress indicator showing that a page is loading. I’m pretty sure it will be included but as of right now I haven’t heard confirmation that it has been added to the list.

If you use The Code Project, this is definitely an Add-in you want to install. You can download the source code and the installer from The Code Project through the article The Code Project Browser Add-in for VS 2005.

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