I love the ability to have recent files listed and various shortcuts for documents of an application pinned to a program’s taskbar icon in Windows 7. I had shortcuts to Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2005 pinned to the taskbar, but unfortunately, when you right click the taskbar icons you don’t get access to the most recently used solutions and projects – you only get the most recently used files. You can’t even manually pin solutions or projects to them. There is, however, a workaround!
Find your Visual Studio “VSLauncher.exe” application. For me, it was located in: “C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\microsoft shared\MSEnv\VSLauncher.exe”. Pin that to the taskbar. You now have access to your most recently used items and you can also pin shortcuts to solutions and projects to that icon.
Here’s a screen shot (with some project & solution names partially blocked out). Enjoy!
Nice workaround! I wonder if anyone has now tried it in Visual Studio 2010 beta…
Michael – Trying VS 2010 Beta is on my list of To-Do’s. I’d actually like to couple that with the “Boot to VHD” functionality that is new to Windows 7 outlined by Scott Hanselman. Gotta’ work that in around the billable time.
When I got 7 running, I was exited to try this new feature of pinning applications. But soon I got disappointed of the realisation. It started with VS, which I couldn’t pin solutions to. Then I also had your idea, with pinning VSLauncher. But any solution opened from its context, opens a new icon in the taskbar. That is not helpful. It’s better to do it the old XP way by putting a folder shortcut.
And it doesn’t stop with VS. I use a lot of programs from PortableApps.com, because I find Microsofts way of spreading a programs files in the system annoying. Only a small percentage of programs really need that and I often have to move computers. The problem is, that portable apps use a launcher, which you cannot useful pin on the taskbar. So I ended up by putting my shortcuts in the startmenu again and still looking for a solution how to use the taskbar pinning.