SAMPLES: How to create top menus, sub menus, context menus, toolbars

The questions of how to create a toolbar, a top menu, a sub menu, an entry on a context menu, etc. appear from time to time on the forums, so I have created a bunch of samples on GitHub:

visualstudioextensibility/VSX-Samples

They use what I consider best practice: the use of the CommandPlacements section in the .vsct file for centralized place to set parent-child relationships.

The code samples are the following:

HOWTO: Create a Visual Studio toolbar
Demonstrates how to create a toolbar.

toolbar

HOWTO: Create a Visual Studio top menu
Demonstrates how to create a top menu.

topmenu

HOWTO: Create Visual Studio commands on a submenu
Demonstrates the use of the CommandPlacements section of the .vsct file to place a command inside a new group on a submenu inside a new group on the Solution context menu and on the Standard toolbar.

submenutoolbar

submenucontextmenu

HOWTO: Create a Visual Studio command on the Solution context menu
Demonstrates the use of the CommandPlacements section of the .vsct file to place a command inside a new group inside the Solution context menu.

solutioncontextmenu

HOWTO: Create a Visual Studio command on the project context menu
Demonstrates the use of the CommandPlacements section of the .vsct file to place a command inside a new group on the context menu of a Windows project, Web project, or multiple projects selected.

projectcontextmenu

HOWTO: Create a Visual Studio command on the file context menu
Demonstrates the use of the CommandPlacements section of the .vsct file to place a command inside a new group on the context menu of a file or multiple files (belonging to the same project, or to different projects).

filecontextmenu

HOWTO: Create a Visual Studio command on the code window context menu
Demonstrates the use of the CommandPlacements section of the .vsct file to place a command inside a new group on the code window context menu.

codewindowcontextmenu

4 thoughts on “SAMPLES: How to create top menus, sub menus, context menus, toolbars”

  1. I attempted to try the “CommandCodeWindowContextMenu” solution, but when I try and run it in Visual Studio (2015 Professional), I get an error indicating “A project with an Output Type of Class Library cannot be started directly.” I’m pretty sure I’ve been developing extensions for a while and thought that this would fall into that category. Perhaps I overlooked something, but could not find anything on this page that would indicate I should do something different.

    1. There are a couple of additional steps to get this to work:
      Right click the project (CommandCodeWindowContextMenu)->Properties->Debug->
      Select ‘Start external program: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe’
      Command line arguments: /rootsuffix Exp

      Note that this is for VS 2015 professional. The actual changes may vary slightly with different VS versions.

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