Compiling class libraries using Visual Studio Standard
About a week ago a VB developer, who I was giving an overview to an .NET application, asked about creating DLL's in Visual Studio. Unfortunately for him he only had Standard Edition and so the option to add a class library project wasn't available from the templates.
However a little knowledge goes a long way and I remembered reading about how the vbproj/csproj file of a project is essentially an XML file containing the build/compile options of the project. So I did a little exploring and found that by changing the <OutputType>WinExe</OutputType> line to <OutputType>Library</OutputType> in the vbproj/csproj file of a project you can indeed compile a class library DLL's using the IDE of Visual Studio Standard 2003.
I explored some more, although not enough, and found you can customise the whole build process using the MSBuild engine. The build process has targets (events) where you can insert your own tasks. Here are some links that I found that cover MSBuild.
Describes the available targets in the MSBuild compile process
http://blogs.msdn.com/msbuild/archive/2005/11/23/496396.aspx
MSBuild Preview Quickstart Tutorials
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e2b4bd85-bd66-4f09-8103-457c3ece8b3e&DisplayLang=en
Compile Apps Your Way With Custom Tasks For The Microsoft Build Engine
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/06/InsideMSBuild/default.aspx