Hierarchies and Selection

Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2015. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

When you customize Visual Studio, you should understand how Visual Studio handles hierarchies such as projects and how it uses selection context to determine what is displayed to the user. This section discusses the concepts of Visual Studio hierarchies and selection.

In This Section

Hierarchies in Visual Studio
Describes project hierarchies and the general concept of hierarchies.

Selection and Currency in the IDE
Describes how the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) maintains information about the user's currently active objects and lets VSPackages track currency.

Selection Context Objects
Discusses the model for how you can determine the user's selection context focus on a window.

Feedback to the User
Discusses how the available functionality in Visual Studio is based on the user's current selection context and overall IDE context.

Architecture
Provides detailed technical information about project types.