Visual Studio® 2010 and .NET 4, Six-in-one

Chapter 4. Visual Studio Templates

Any time you start developing a new application with Visual Studio, you start by creating a new project or adding a new project to an existing solution. Because you can start with a new console application, Windows service, ASP.NET site, or whatever application type you use, you may underestimate the work that the IDE does behind the scenes when generating a project skeleton.

Let's enumerate a few activities done by the IDE that help you start with a project:

• A project file is created that controls the build process.

• The project's properties related to build, debug, and so on, are set up according to the project type.

• Source code items and resources are added to the project.

• In several cases, helpful documentation is generated.

In the heart of Visual Studio, project creation is based on the concept of project templates. When you start a new project, a template determines how your project's build process is established, what properties are set up (and to which values), and what kind of items are generated for you.

Visual Studio 2010 ships with almost a hundred project templates supporting the Visual Basic, C#, F#, and Visual C++ languages. The built-in templates are very useful, and, in many cases, they are a perfect place for you to start with a new application.

However, there are cases in which a customized project type would be a great benefit for your current work. Here are a few examples:

• When you create user interface (UI) intensive applications, you ...