Tweaking your Visual Studio 2010 Start Page (for example, to show your 30 must recent projects…)

Shai Raiten - Change VS 2010 Start Page Recent Projects Count + Custom Start Page With Site

“In the mood of improving my work couple of days ago I wrote about Wifi Network Backup Manager Utility a utility that allows you to Save and Load Wifi Network Profiles, using Native Wifi API through P/Invoke interop.

Today I decide that I’ll change Visual Studio 2010 Start Page to show things I really wants starting from more Recent Projects, today VS 2010 only shows 10 recent projects, because I have a lot more than 10 recent projects I want to continually open I’ve increased the Max Count of recent projects.

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Custom Start Pages were talked about a bit at VS2010 launch, but its not something we hear much about now. It could be that VS users got used to the “old” start pages and never really realized the power that is now available to us (Insert “VS 2010’s Start Page isn’t your daddy’s VS Start Page…” quip here.). For example, Start Pages can be installed like any other Visual Studio Extension, they are really just XAML, etc, etc.

Here’s a bit more information on the Custom VS Start Pages;

• MSDN - Custom Start Pages
• Visual Studio Gallery - Custom Start Page Project Template
• Visual Studio Developer Center - How Do I Video Series - How Do I: Customize the Visual Studio 2010 Start Page?
• The Visual Studio Blog - Walkthrough: Creating a Custom Start Page – Part 1 & Walkthrough: Creating a Custom Start Page – Part 2
• Pedro Silva's Blog -Creating Custom StartPage Extensions