I’ve linked to these a bit over on my link blog last year, but I think they warrant a dedicated post here.
I’ve been spending a fair bit of time with VSTO lately, and I’ve found Steve Hansen’s How To videos to be one of the best resources in getting me started.
What I particularly like is that he takes interesting ideas as his sample examples. For instance: how to put a WPF Action Pane in Excel, or how to Search SharePoint from Word. No ‘Hello World’ sleep inducers here.
The other thing I like is that most between 10 and 20 minutes in length. Watch one whilst you’re having breakfast. Or lunch. Too easy.
[Last year I tried to get through some of the TechEd videos but found it too difficult due to their length. At over an hour each I could never get through in a single sitting and always found myself coming back to a half watched session wondering where I had got up to.]Short videos is the way forward.
Here’s a few links to Steve’s videos that I watched and found useful:
- How Do I: Use WPF Controls Inside an Excel Actions Pane?
- How Do I: Create Outlook Form Regions Using Visual Studio 2008?
- How Do I: Use the Ribbon Designer to Customize the Ribbon in Excel?
- How Do I: Use Task Panes in Outlook?
- How Do I: Deploy a VSTO Add-In?
- How Do I: Customize Outlook Item Context Menus?
- How Do I: Use MOSS Enterprise Search in a Client Application?
- How Do I: Create an Outlook Add-in?
There are plenty more on the VSTO How Do I videos page.
I’ve also been checking out Beth Massi’s excellent How Do I videos on VB and LINQ – but more on those another time.
