Zuhaib

Today after upgrading a ASP.NET Web Application project in Visual Studio 2010 the project failed to load in Visual Studio 2008. If the machine has both VS2008 and VS2010 installed then the project loaded just fine. But, if a machine does not has VS2010 installed the Web Application failed to load.

After the upgrade Visual Studio 2010 modified the following:

<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v9.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" />
TO
<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" />

Because the v10.0 (second) path is not present in machines that do not have V2010 installed, VS2008 was unable to load the project.

After googling I came across this post which tells to use MSBuild’s condition statements to specify the correct path based on the the Visual Studio version. His solution worked fine, the only problem that I faced was when I open the solution in VS2010, it again asked to upgrade the project file, doing which changed the v9.0 path to v10.0 path.

I had to make few minor changes to solve this problem:

Step1:

Add the V10.0 path before the V9.0 MSBuild extension path with a Condition property to check for the file based on the Solution Version.

<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" Condition="'$(Solutions.VSVersion)' == '10.0'" />
<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v9.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" Condition="'$(Solutions.VSVersion)' == '9.0'" />

Here is we do not specify the Visual Studio 2010 MSBuild extension path first the Visual Studio will try to upgrade the project.

Step2:

After the project file upgrade VS2010 would have changed the FileUpgradeFlags tags value to 0, which would again trigger an upgrade. Remove the Zero from the tag.

<FileUpgradeFlags></FileUpgradeFlags>

Save the project file and reload. Now you will be able to load the project in VS2010 & VS2008 (Even if VS2010 is not installed) without any problem.

Hope it helps.

As you guys might already know, that Visual Studio 2010 & .NET Framework 4.0 has been released. All of the latest development tools from Microsoft are full of awesomeness. If you haven’t already got your hands on the latest version of Visual Studio, then below are few links that can get you started:

• Download Visual Studio 2010.
• Read blogs.
  • ScottGu
  • Scott Hanselman
  • Haacked (For MVC goodness)
• Watch shows.
  • Channel9 10-4
  • MIX10 Videos
• And of course Google.

My Visual Studio Color Scheme

I have always preferred working in dark color schemes, but because the color of visual studio 2005 & 2008 was light, it was difficult to get a complete dark working environment.

But as the new Visual Studio IDE is built using WPF, we can customize the theme of the IDE using the Visual Studio Color Theme Editor. This is one of my favorite extensions for Visual Studio 2010. The extension comes with few built-in color schemes, that are actually quite good. But, I wanted my IDE to be more like Expression Blend. So, I have created my own theme for Visual Studio 2010, which is not yet complete. But, if you like it then give it a try.

Dark:

Some parts of the Visual Studio IDE like the Solution Explorer, Property Window, Scroll Bars etc are rendered natively (your current windows theme). So, there is no way (that I know) to customize the color of those particular parts of the IDE.

Download

To import the Expression theme, install the Visual Studio Color Theme Editor extension and then import the file from the Customize Colors dialog.

Gray:

The author of the extension has given detailed explanation about how to create the lighter version of the Expression Blend theme on his blog. Check out his post here or click here to download the gray theme.

PS: If you enhance this theme, then please share.

Update (05/03/2010):

• Fixed tool window button colors.
• Fixed dropdown & combobox colors.

Update (05/20/2010):

• Fixed panel tab hover colors.
• Fixed command bar colors.