Summary

In this chapter, we described how to leverage the power of Visual Studio's automation APIs to create macros, add-ins, and wizards.

You saw that the macro recorder gives you a quick entry point into driving various components of the IDE and that the Macro Explorer itself rounds out that equation by providing a fully featured development environment for building on top of these recorded macros or creating macros from scratch.

You also investigated the nearly unlimited potential for extending Visual Studio by using add-ins that call into the automation API and expose their interfaces in a variety of ways, including custom tool windows and dialog boxes.

And last, you saw how to once again leverage the ubiquitous automation object model and the built-in wizard engine to create your own custom wizards for adding new projects, adding new project items, or executing nearly any other type of algorithm within Visual Studio.