Along with the Visio 2010 Release to Manufacturing, we are also pleased to announce that the Visio 2010 SDK and Visio 2010 Viewer are now available for download.
The Microsoft Visio 2010 Software Development Kit (SDK) contains developer documentation, sample applications, and other tools to help developers create custom solutions for Visio 2010. Since the release of the Visio Beta SDK, we have made a number of improvements to the SDK: most notably, we have updated the documentation in the SDK and included a new sample application based on Microsoft Office development tools in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. The Visio SDK Documentation and the Visio Code Samples Library now both contain updated 2010 content. The latter includes sample code for Fluent UI (a.k.a. Ribbon) extensibility, diagram validation, container membership, diagram creation and traversal using the Connectivity API, and saving to Visio Services.
The new sample application was added to the Visio SDK due to popular demand: developers wanted an example of deploying a VSTO add-in using ClickOnce installation. Our new sample demonstrates how to use new Visual Studio 2010 functionality to install Visio template and stencil files, as part of a Visio add-in deployment, using a “ClickOnce” post-deployment action. After installation, the custom template associated with the add-in is displayed in the Office BackStage View and the add-in is triggered when a new diagram is created from the template. The add-in itself simply drops a shape from a custom stencil onto the drawing page when it is triggered. This basic example can be used by developers to create more complex VSTO add-ins based on their own requirements.
Microsoft Visio 2010 Viewer allows anyone to view Visio diagrams (.vsd, .vss, .vst, .vdx, .vsx and .vtx files created with Visio 5.0 through Visio 2010) inside their Microsoft Internet Explorer (versions 5 through 8) Web browser. By using Microsoft Visio 2010 Viewer, Visio users can freely distribute Visio drawings and diagrams to team members, partners, customers, or others, even if the recipients do not have Visio installed on their computers. Internet Explorer also allows recipients to print the portion of the Visio drawing displayed in the browser window. Visio Viewer is implemented as an ActiveX control that loads and renders Visio drawings inside Internet Explorer.
We are very excited to release these two free Visio downloads to make it easier to develop Visio solutions and view Visio diagrams. Please continue to let us know what you think and comment on our blog!
