Don’t like where a button is by default?  Go ahead and move it.  To speed up your workflow, add handy commands to a context menu.  To reduce clutter, remove commands that you never use.  Yes, customizing the UI can take a little while to get it just right, but doing so will provide you with a workspace that can boost your productivity.

I recorded a video (split in two parts) to demonstrate some of the different UI customizations that can be done in Visual Studio 2010. In Part 1, I demonstrate creating a new toolbar, adding/removing commands to/from a toolbar, changing toolbar dock locations. In Part 2, I show how to add a command to the Editor’s context menu.

Part 1: http://ecn.channel9.msdn.com/o9/ch9/0/6/4/2/1/5/contextmenucustomization_ch9.wmv 

Part 2: http://ecn.channel9.msdn.com/o9/ch9/8/8/0/2/1/5/commandbarcustomization1_ch9.wmv

When we switched over to the WPF shell, we had to re-implement much of the customization UI.  Our priority was to include a customization experience that was accessible to all users (e.g. those who rely on screen readers). Unfortunately, the drag and drop interaction for customization that we has in previous versions of Visual Studio was expensive to re-write, and we weren’t able to include it.  I’ve received a number of comments on this via bug reports through Microsoft Connect, and I want to reassure people that we will be exploring improvements in future releases.