Tip #103: Adding the New Website and Open Website buttons to the VS2010 Start Page

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In the new VS2010 UI, the start page has been completely re-written.  Part of the changes made were to hide the New Website and Open Website buttons.  Basically it went from the old look in VS2008:

vs2008_startPage

To the new look in VS2010:

vs2010_noWebControls

Of course, ASP.NET website projects are still around and not going away soon.  Here’s a very quick way to make them show up on the Start Page again.

  1. Download the StartPageWeb.zip file linked here
  2. Extract StartPageWeb.xaml and copy it into your Documents\Visual Studio 10.0\StartPages folder
  3. Open Visual Studio 2010 and open Tools –> Options.  Find the option under Environment –> Startup, and set the Customize Start Page dropdown to point at the new XAML file.

That’s it!  Now your start page will look like this:

vs2010_webControls

Note: you may get a security warning that the file is not trusted.  This is due to downloading it from the scary Internet.  From Windows Explorer, you can right-click the file, select Properties, and then select the Unblock button by the bottom:

unblock_file

Hope you find this helpful!

- Jimmy Lewis
SDET | Visual Web Developer team