In the last chapter, we looked at authoring custom solutions using the console and the MP Author tool from Silect. These tools use wizards to simplify the authoring process and to shield the author from the complexities of the XML underneath. Visual Studio takes a different approach, providing minimal wizards and often requiring you to modify the XML directly.

This has the advantage of enabling you to use the full power and depth of the features available to you rather than relying on wizards created by people to cater to the majority of requirements. Unfortunately, it also has the effect of making even the simplest customization more complex because of the need to learn a complicated tool, such as Visual Studio, to edit XML that you may be unfamiliar with.

In this chapter, we will take an example from our previous chapter but author it in Visual Studio. We will make a couple of enhancements that are not currently possible using wizard-driven interfaces. Visual Studio stores each...