Re: DOTNET-PRODUCTS Digest - 17 Nov 2002 to 18 Nov 2002 (#2002-53)

Two things:

I can personally vouch for Francis' product - it rocks! Why he hasn't
gotten more attention is a mystery to me as it does more than competing
products and since re-installing it and using it yesterday, it has
become my *preferred* Browser.

As to VSIP, something I know a little about, as I have shipped 3
products with it (find one here
(http://radio.weblogs.com/0105852/2002/07/13.html#a692). VSIP is
immensely complex and requires a very deep investment and commitment. It
is not to be taken lightly and not without support. You won't see it
released in any public form, IMHO, as it is not practical to do so. That
being said, there are about 10 things that can be done only with VSIP
and not the Automation model (add-ins) like be on the VS splash screen,
etc but there is a whole lot that can be done with the automation model.
I just saved a company 4 months and thousands of dollars because they
were virtually convinced that they had to go down that VSIP route and I
did everything in Automation. The deal breaker is this: Can you accept
that the user could shut off your functionality by using the Add-In
Manager. If so, you can use an add-in unless you need to be on the
splash screen, custom editor type, custom project hierarchy, etc.


I know there are not a lot of resources out there (VS books currently
really suck) and VSIP is NDA. But I do know that Chris Sells' new
upcoming VS.NET book will cover add-ins very well and even some VSIP.

----------------------------------------------
Sam Gentile
Microsoft .NET Consultant
http://www.samgentile.com/
Read my .NET Blog at http://radio.weblogs.com/0105852/


-----Original Message-----
From: dotnet-products [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Francis Upton
Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2002 10:46 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [DOTNET-PRODUCTS] DOTNET-PRODUCTS Digest - 17 Nov 2002 to
18 Nov 2002 (#2002-53)

>One thing that struck me about this product and others is that it
really
>wants to be hosted by Visual Studio.NET.  The Addin/Automation model is
>a start but to do a nice job with this kind of tool I'm guessing you'd
>need VSIP.
>
>
>
>
>Anybody know if/when the Microsoft VSIP program will be opened up to
the
>general public?  $10K/year is so prohibitive - I'm not sure why they
>went this route to begin with one of my favorite things about .NET is
>VS.NET.  It could be a great dev platform if it was more accessible.
>Though from what I hear from Sam the APIs are no walk in the park.


I agree that the APIs are not a walk in the park, but from what I can
see,
its not that difficult to use the AddIn model with VS.NET.  You might
want
to try my ActiveX/COM Inspector (www.nogoop.com) with VS.NET to
dynamically
inspector the COM API exported by VS.NET.  This was one of the main
reasons
I developed these inspectors.  That combined with the documentation
seems
to be sufficient.  At least it has worked for me.  I don't see the need
for
VSIP.

Francis