Another “It would be cool if…” Post

At the time of this post I am using Visual Studio 2010 RC.

I very seldom work with “files” in Visual Studio, so it doesn’t make sense to me to have files listed in the “Recent” jump list in Windows 7.

In fact, I so rarely work with individual files that, if I do need to work on one, I would likely have to hunt it down through Windows Explorer and thus be able to double-click it.

I work on Solutions. Projects. Not so much files.

So, it would be cool if Visual Studio 2010 would put the projects that I use most in the jump list and leave the files out.

Another “Me being fussy” Rant

There is a solution to this, I’m just being picky.

Visual Studio 2010 lets you pin your favourite/most used projects to the jump list on the Start Page inside the IDE. I tend to turn this page off, however.

In the settings for Startup the IDE team actually gives us a pretty good way to do whatever the heck we want when VIsual Studio launches.

On top of half a dozen default options (including ones that let you get at recent projects and solutions easily) you can also create your own custom start-up page.

Part of the Visual Studio Extensibility bits is a set of controls that make it easy to build your own page, which is coded in XAML. The VSX team had a blog post on this back in Beta 1, but I haven’t found an updated reference. What’s there is still mostly relevant, though you’ll find that some of the work in creating a start page (and a sample project) is already there for you.