VSTO For Dummies

Chapter 4. Designing for VSTO

In This Chapter

• Keeping up with user expectations

• Using the project lifecycle

• Getting the most out of VSTO

• Keeping in mind design tips when building applications

• Benefiting from VSTO

Chapters 2 and 3 showed the basics for the two major tools built into Visual Studio Tools for Office — add-ins and Customized Documents. While these are the tools, the design still needs to be handled. To handle the design, you, as the developer, need to know what VSTO can do for you.

This isn't a marketing slick for VSTO, but we do want to get across the features and benefits of the tool as a whole. The biggest part of using software like VSTO is thinking about how it can accomplish the goals when a sheaf of requirements is dropped on your desk.

We, like you, are working programmers. We understand that you need to solve problems every day. We believe that VSTO, and the Office Server System concept, will become a larger and larger part of both of our toolkits over the next three years.

In order to facilitate that transition, we offer up this honest look at what VSTO can and can't do.

Meeting the Growing Requirements of Users

We use Google every day. Google is becoming a ubiquitous application for computer programmers. In fact, the search engine is only part of Google. We use the mail software, the word processor, spreadsheet, and advertising tools, too. All told, millions of users take advantage of the more than 30 tools produced by Google.

We hope Google continues to revolutionize ...