I probably would not have posted this if the problem only existed on my XP workstation, but when I had the same problem yesterday on my Vista laptop and had to dig the same post up again to find out the solution, I decided I needed to mention it.
After the Silverlight Toolkit was released, there was a post about adding the tools to the Toolbox. I re-blogged it in case anyone needed it, but I figured I didn't ... I mean I've been around Visual Studio since it was "Visual C++" Beta, so what's the big deal?
Well, until it IS a big deal as in Right-clicking and selecting "Choose Items" and turning to the other PC while waiting and when I turn back, I'm not looking at Visual Studio, but at an explorer window that was open under it... hmmm. So I open VS2008 SP1 again and watch after I select "Choose Items" and it just goes away. WTF... is it going away to choose? Didn't it like any of the choices? ... oh wait, that happened on the other machine too, so where in this rat's nest of favorites did I save the URL of how to do this??
Here it is: Adding Items to the Visual Studio Toolbox and in the interests of crap disappearing off the interweb, I'm going to quote Greg here, with changes that I had to follow:
- Open a Visual Studio command prompt
- Type in devenv /safemode
- Open a xaml file such as page.xaml
- Right click on the toolbox and choose the option Choose Items at the place you want to insert the new tools
- Click on the "Silverlight Components" tab
- Use the Browse button to find the DLL, then press OK
- Wash, rinse, repeat until you have everything inserted that you want
- Exit VS -- remember you're in safemode
- Restart VS and you should be golden
Greg's original instructions just discussed walking the tabs in safemode and finding one that throws an error, then you'd be ok NOT in safemode, but that didn't work for me. I just tried it now that everything from the Toolkit has been added and NOT in safemode, and I think I'd be ok with the Silverlight Tab, but the WPF one is an instant VS-killer.
It's good to know about starting VS in safemode :)
Happy Toolkitting and
Stay in the 'Light!
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