Does Add References make you crazy? Dread using it because you hate the wait? Check this out… The “Fast Add Reference Dialog” VS Addin

Tuna Toksoz - VS Addin: Fast Add Reference Dialog - No more Coffee Break!

“I have spent a couple of days on implementing a fast add reference dialog box for Visual Studio (with some help from an existing addin). The time of adding a reference has been a great time to have some coffee, to have lunch, or even a way to save economy (remember, developer time costs money!). If you don’t believe me, take a look at what tweeps say.

It is actually easy once you find some of the extension points of Visual Studio.

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Now, I am done. I should now design the dialog itself that looks very similar to the original one. There is another problem: There is no "Windows Explorer Like” control for Windows Forms. There is OpenFileDialog but it is a dialog, not a control. I found the most similar one at GongShell Project which is licensed under GPL.

My current screen looks like the one below:

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I won’t comment more on the code, go grab it and try it. I wont continue developing this little addin, so you are free to do it on your own. Just drop me an email when you do it, though.

I just warn you: Com stuff is like walking on a mine field, and I am not taking any responsibility in case you loose data.

Download the code and the binaries here [GD: click through to the post to get the link… I didn’t want to leach on their traffic ;] and put the binaries into Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Addins folder. Have fun!”

Some Add Reference help is help indeed. ;)

In the 10 seconds I took to play with this, I got an error loading the Addin when starting it in VS2008 x86. Yet since the author included the source I’m sure with a little splunking & tweaking I could get it to work. Heck the hard work is done at least!  :)