Visual Studio Hacks

Hack the Registry #30

Chapter 4, Customizing Visual Studio

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HACK

button shown in Figure 4-16. The extension .cxm will be added to Visual

Studio and treated like an .xml file.

You can also remove custom extensions by selecting the extension from the

drop-down and clicking the Delete button. Changes made to custom exten-

sions are made for all users of your machine, not just you.

To edit custom file extensions, you must be logged in as

administrator on your machine, or you must launch the

VSTweak application by right-clicking on it and choosing

Run As, then log in using an administrator account.

Managing custom file extensions is very useful, especially when creating cus-

tom file types or when hacking Visual Studio to do something it was never

intended to do (such as adding the ability to edit .php files

[Hack #12]).

HACK

#30

Hack the Registry Hack #30

Visual Studio has some settings that you can get to only through the registry.

You’ll need to be careful, but you can do some incredible things in there.

The Visual Studio registry contains a host of settings. Some of these settings

can be accessed from the normal Tool

➝ Options dialog; others can be

edited with Visual Studio power toys; some can be edited only directly in the

registry. In this hack, you are going to learn how to make these changes,

how to use an alternative registry, and how to move these settings from

machine to machine.

Registry Settings ...