Community Download Feature

With Visual Studio 2005 you get more than what comes in the box. You also get an easy, integrated way to find and download new components created by others in the developer community. Using the community download feature, you can search and download project templates, item templates, code snippets, controls and add-ins. You can also download packages of different kinds of content, such as a Starter Kit, rolled together into a single compressed .vsi file. How does it work? When you search online for downloads, Visual Studio calls Web services hosted by MSDN that aggregate metadata about content. You will have access not only to MSDN content, but also to downloads available on a wide range of participating Codezone communities. Codezone is a network of independent expert Web sites whose members have been selected by the .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET teams, and now Codezone site resources are accessible from directly within Visual Studio. When you search for community downloads, the search results will show you the description, the source community site, the author of the content, and the rating the item has been given in that community. If you decide you want and trust the content, you can download it from this location.