VS 2010 Tip

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:

To the new look in VS2010:

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:

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: