How do you build a Visual Studio like UI?

Question

I'm looking to build a .Net application that has a UI similar to that of Visual Studio. Is there a name for that paradigm? Or does anyone know of a tutorial to do so...or even an OSS project that utilizes that paradigm? I'm looking for like the docking aspects and the interaction between panels...

99% of my experience is in the web space...so this sort of application is a new effort for me.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Take a look at sharpdevelop. Its OpenSource, there is even a book on its design/implementation and how to extend it.

That should get you going, and even give you code to start with.

Answer 2

If you're building an application that also needs some of VS's behavior, then you might want to consider extending VS IDE itself. See MSDN Visual Studio Extensibily. Note that starting with VS 2008 you can ship IDE extensions as stand-alone (I think it's called shell mode).