How to add new customizations to existing add-in projects

Summary
Item templates aid in the creation of Button, CheckBox, ComboBox, DockWindow, Extension, and Gallery classes, which can be added to existing add-in projects. When you use the templates, wizards guide you through a few simple steps.

In this topic

About adding new customizations

ArcGIS Explorer installs several item templates that work with item wizards to accelerate the development of new customizations and remove the need to create items from scratch by writing standard code.
These templates can be used to add new Button, CheckBox, ComboBox, DockWindow, Extension, or Gallery classes to existing add-in projects. ArcGIS Explorer item templates can only be used to add items to projects created with the ArcGIS Explorer project templates. For more information, see How to create add-in projects.
Each template is available in VB .NET and C# for Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2010, and Visual Studio Express editions.

Adding new customizations

To add a new customization to an existing add-in project, use the ArcGIS Explorer item templates for a DockWindow, ComboBox, CheckBox, Button, Extension, or Gallery item by doing the following steps:
  1. Start Visual Studio.
  2. Right-click the project, choose Add, then choose New Item. The Add New Item dialog box appears.
  3. Under the Categories pane, click the ArcGIS and Explorer nodes (ensure that the Explorer node is selected).
  4. Select the applicable ArcGIS Explorer item template under the Templates pane.
  5. Type a name for the new item in the Name text box, and click Add. See the following screen shots:

Customizing properties

When you select the type of customization you want to add and clicked Add to close the Add New Item dialog box, a wizard appears where you can customize the properties of your new class, such as the caption that shows on the Ribbon. Each type of add-in class requires different properties. See the following screen shots:
You can hover the mouse pointer over the Help icons on the wizard for ToolTip information about each type of setting.
Some properties are optional (such as, Help uniform resource locator [URL] and ToolTip) and most properties have a default value specified for you, including all of the mandatory properties.
When you complete the wizard and click Finish, the new item is added to the existing project. The details of the new item are also added to the AddIns.xml file in the project and will be included in the add-in file creation and verification the next time the project is built.
The pages shown on the New ArcGIS Explorer wizards are the same as the pages shown on the New ArcGIS Explorer Project wizards.