I’ve often struggled with the way that Visual Studio’s Blank Solution template creates projects.  Essentially you’re given a folder for the solution, and projects go inside of it.  When you consider the fact that most projects have a host of other things related to it, not just source code, the structure found in most open source projects is more appealing.

For an example, this is what I’m talking about:

 

The project is well-organized and has places for build artifacts, 3rd party assemblies, documentation, etc.

For new projects, I find myself frequently performing these steps:

• Open Visual Studio, File -> New Project, Blank Solution
• Close Visual Studio
• Navigate to the folder in Explorer
• Create a new folder called src
• Move the .sln file into the src folder
• Double-click the new .sln file

Today I figured out how to just add a new right-click menu option in Windows Explorer.  It involved a simple registry hack, and a little hex editing.  The end result:

Choosing this new option adds a new file and opens it for rename:

Rename the file, and presto!

 

To add this to your system, copy & run this registry file (make sure remove the .txt):  right-click-sln.reg

Of course, you should be sure to back up your registry before running this file.  I’m not responsible for jacking up your system :).  Tested on XP SP3 & Vista x64 SP1.