On the other hand, Visual Basic Express and Visual C# Express are two different AppIds. If you install Standard and Professional on to the same machine, you end up with a Visual Studio environment that contains features from both editions and you cannot start one without the other. For example, Standard and Professional editions are the same AppId. exe (the executable you run to start the environment) and a registry root that stores application configuration. Each AppId is uniquely identified by a stub. You may have heard members of the VSX team use the term AppId (short for application identity) to talk about different instances of environments. Both offerings share identical feature components.

While the Shell (isolated mode) is a brand-new offering, the Shell (integrated mode) is the new name for the Premier Partner Edition, which was offered in Visual Studio. These are, in fact, two separate binary downloads. Visual Studio 2008 Shell is actually offered as two “modes”: VS 2008 Shell (isolated mode) and VS 2008 Shell (integrated mode). A Word About Isolated versus Integrated Mode

Your end-users will also benefit from the familiar user interface of Visual Studio in your tools environment. In addition to the core IDE features such as menus/commands and tool window framework, the Shell also includes a rich set of component features that you may be able to take advantage of, including the Windows Forms designer and the WPF Designer. By building on the Visual Studio Shell, you can significantly accelerate your development time by focusing on your core tools instead of building and maintaining the environment. The key benefit of the Shell is that it allows anyone to quickly build their own tools environment, leveraging a proven and solid foundation of the Visual Studio IDE. The Shell’s target users are ISVs and other developers who wish to build their own tools IDEs, and in turn ship to their users and customers. Its target users are not the typical developers who would use the other editions of Visual Studio. The Visual Studio 2008 Shell is a new edition of Visual Studio offered to developers who wish to build their own development tools inside the Visual Studio IDE.

In this article, I will give an overview of what the Shell is, what it contains, and how you can start leveraging it to start creating your own tools IDE. In the next Visual Studio wave of products, Microsoft will distribute its world-class IDE freely via its VS 2008 Shell offerings.

Microsoft visual studio 10 shell