At some point with any decently complex project, you are going to need to start customizing your build process. Visual Studio makes this possible, and not too terribly painful, by giving developers the ability to write custom MSBuild project files. But eventually, you are going to hit the limit of what the MSBuild XML syntax can do for you - but when you reach that point, there is something else waiting - custom tasks! MSBuild gives you the ability to write custom build tasks in C# (or any .NET language), and use those tasks inside of MSBuild project files. We are going to be taking a look today at how to create these tasks and how to use them.

One very convenient features in windows is the Taskbar. To make it even better, those little icons can make something so "out of the way" that you can forget what is even down there. But, sometimes you want your applications to hang down there, out of the way, doing something that requires little attention. You can even make some notification bubbles show up if you want.

What is the first thing that pops into your mind when you think of the using keyword for C#? Probably those lines that always appear at the top of C# code files - the lines that import types from other namespaces into your code. But while that is the most common use of the using keyword, it is not the only one. Today we are going to take a look at the different uses of the using keyword and what they are useful for.

Arrays are a staple in programming, but nowadays in this world of dynamic content, you often times need something more flexible. This is where the other C# collections come into play. A long time ago, I did a tutorial on a collection called a dictionary, but those types of collection have a niche. Today, I am going to go over its older brother and sensei of sorts, the List.

When it comes to Microsoft products lately, many don't count a product released until the 1st service pack. Well, for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5, the wait is over. Personally, I've been using Visual Studio 2008 since they were in beta and I contest it's still one of the best IDE's on the planet. The service pack adds some bug fixes and new features that are sure to make most .NET developers happy.

Microsoft Visual Studio has pretty much every operation you'd ever need right at your fingertips through the built in keystrokes. However, there are times when you'd like the text editor to do something that isn't built in. This is where macros come in. Macros can be wired up to keystrokes and can do pretty much unlimited modifications to your text - as long as you're willing to program it. In this tutorial, I'm going to demonstrate how to import an existing macro and configure a keystroke for it.

Visual Studio actually has a very powerful wizard and template system, which when used correctly, can automate large amounts of tedious work. Today we are going to take a look at how to create Item Templates for Visual Studio, which is actually extremely simple to do.

A cool feature that Visual Studio has is the concept of a "code snippet." You know those chunks of code that you need to type over and over again throughout your code? Perhaps your logging calls, or even more mundane than that, the generic code for try-catch blocks. Well, the folks behind Visual Studio came up with an idea to help keep that concept to a minimum - code snippets. Essentially, it is like having that repetitive code always on your clipboard, ready to "paste" into your code - except it is way more powerful than just copying and pasting code.

Since Microsoft hasn't released an official library of controls for Silverlight, making and using your own is very important. This tutorial is going to show you how to import and add a custom control to your Silverlight application.