{"id":235439,"date":"2021-11-16T08:00:19","date_gmt":"2021-11-16T16:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/?p=235439"},"modified":"2021-11-15T13:40:33","modified_gmt":"2021-11-15T21:40:33","slug":"writing-extensions-just-got-easier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/writing-extensions-just-got-easier\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing extensions just got easier"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In collaboration with the open source community, we\u2019re introducing a new toolkit for writing Visual Studio extensions. Extensions used to be difficult to write, but the new toolkit makes it easier than ever. The toolkit consists of brand-new tooling inside Visual Studio as well as new APIs to code against. It\u2019s all included in the free <a href=\"https:\/\/marketplace.visualstudio.com\/items?itemName=MadsKristensen.ExtensibilityEssentials2022\">Extensibility Essentials<\/a> extension.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Pk7jdsvEhfc\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The community of Visual extenders are in a unique position to help create the tooling inside Visual Studio that they themselves would like to use. This toolkit is made by the community \u2013 for the community.<\/p>\n<h2>Getting started<\/h2>\n<p>The best way to getting started with the toolkit is to visit the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vsixcookbook.com\/\">VSIX Cookbook<\/a>. It\u2019s a website with guides, documentation, and recipes designed to help jump start extension development. It\u2019s for beginners and advanced extenders alike. For short video walkthroughs on a bunch of extensibility topics using the toolkit, head on over to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLReL099Y5nRdz9jvxuy_LgHFKowkx8tS4\">VS Fundamentals: Extensions<\/a> playlist.<\/p>\n<h2>It would be cool if\u2026<\/h2>\n<p>Ok, so we made it easier to get started, but where do you get ideas for what extensions to write? When I\u2019m out of ideas, I often browse through the <a href=\"https:\/\/developercommunity.visualstudio.com\/search?space=8&amp;ftype=idea&amp;stateGroup=active\">open feature requests<\/a> logged by Visual Studio users. That\u2019s my favorite go-to place for inspiration and I always find ideas I can use. My test is that if the idea can successfully finish the sentence: <em>It would be cool if\u2026<\/em>, then it\u2019s a good one.<\/p>\n<p>Happy coding!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In collaboration with the open source community, we\u2019re introducing a new toolkit for writing Visual Studio extensions. Extensions used to be difficult to write, but the new toolkit makes it easier than ever. The toolkit consists of brand-new tooling inside Visual Studio as well as new APIs to code against. It\u2019s all included in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":642,"featured_media":255385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1388],"tags":[294,880],"class_list":["post-235439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-extensibility","tag-extensions","tag-get-started"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>In collaboration with the open source community, we\u2019re introducing a new toolkit for writing Visual Studio extensions. Extensions used to be difficult to write, but the new toolkit makes it easier than ever. The toolkit consists of brand-new tooling inside Visual Studio as well as new APIs to code against. It\u2019s all included in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/642"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}