“Visual Studio Tips, 251 ways to improve your Productivity in Visual Studio“, courtesy of ‘Sara Ford’
Sara Ford’s Blog
If you are using the General Development Settings, the command Window.CloseDocumentWindow is bound to Ctrl+F4. This will close the current document.
Happy Programming! =)
Tip 4.9: You can use Ctrl+F6 and Ctrl+Shift+F6 to navigate among opened document windows
“Visual Studio Tips, 251 ways to improve your Productivity in Visual Studio“, courtesy of ‘Sara Ford’
Sara Ford’s Blog
Sara AsideThis tip was posted on Mardi Gras Day 2008, while she was back home celebrating carnival. Happy Mardi Gras, y’all, from New Orleans!! |
Similar to Ctrl+Tab functionality, Ctrl+F6 and Ctrl+Shift+F6 allow you to navigate to the next and previous opened documents, respectively, based on a most-recently used sort order. One clear difference here is that the IDE Navigator does not appear, unlike when you use Ctrl+Tab.
Happy Programming! =)
Tip 4.8: How to disable the IDE Navigator
“Visual Studio Tips, 251 ways to improve your Productivity in Visual Studio“, courtesy of ‘Sara Ford’
Sara Ford’s Blog
The IDE Navigator isn’t for everyone. Some developers prefer that Ctrl+Tab quickly cycle through all their open documents instead of flashing an additional piece of UI.
To disable the IDE Navigator, do this:
- Open Tools–Options–Environment–Keyboard.
- Under Show Commands Containing, type Window.NextDocumentWindowNav.
- Click the Remove button to remove the Ctrl+Tab keyboard shortcut binding.
To go back to previous Visual Studio Ctrl+Tab behavior, do the following:
- Under Show Commands Containing, type Window.NextDocumentWindow.
- Position the cursor in the Press Shortcut Keys box, and then press Ctrl+Tab.
- Click Assign to bind the keyboard shortcut.
- Click OK to accept the changes and dismiss the Tools–Options dialog box.
And Ctrl+Tab will cycle through all open documents without the IDE Navigator popping up.
You’ll want to remove the Ctrl+Shift+Tab keyboard shortcut from the Window.PreviousDocumentWindowNav command and bind it to the Window.PreviousDocumentWindow command instead so that you can have both forward and backward navigation in the file tab channel.
Happy Programming! =)
Tip 4.7: You can use Ctrl+Tab to bring up the IDE Navigator to get a bird’s-eye view of and navigate all open files and tool windows
“Visual Studio Tips, 251 ways to improve your Productivity in Visual Studio“, courtesy of ‘Sara Ford’
Sara Ford’s Blog
The IDE Navigator is bound to the Window.NextDocumentWindowNav command, in case you want to change it. She knows some settings have Ctrl+Tab bound to Window.NextDocumentWindow (no Nav).
In Visual Studio 2008, they (since she technically didn’t work on that version of Visual Studio) did a lot of UI tweaks with the IDE Navigator. You’ll notice that there’s more real estate (which is what they call the actual space in a UI dialog box), so you can see more of the file path. And of course, there’s the preview window, which is pretty cool. (She said “Oooh!” when she first saw it, but she’s a little biased.)
Happy Programming!
Tip 4.6: Under what condition does the file tab channel drop-down button change its icon?
“Visual Studio Tips, 251 ways to improve your Productivity in Visual Studio“, courtesy of ‘Sara Ford’
Sara Ford’s Blog
Next you see a picture containing the right portion of the file tab channel. The drop-down arrow to the right of the tabs drops down the list of open files.
Now, when does a bar appear over the drop-down arrow (as shown next)?
When at least one file tab has fallen off the file tab channel, the icon will change, representing the hidden file or files.
Happy Programming! =)
Tip 4.5: How to close just the selected files you want
“Visual Studio Tips, 251 ways to improve your Productivity in Visual Studio“, courtesy of ‘Sara Ford’
Sara Ford’s Blog
Okay, this is not one of her better “Tip of the Day” titles, but it’s her way of introducing the Window Windows dialog box. It is such a simple dialog box, but for some reason she loved testing it. Maybe it was because it didn’t have that many (if any) automated test-case failures to analyze.
You can bring up the Window Windows dialog box by choosing Windows from the Window menu.
There are several things you can do with this dialog box:
- Select which files you want to close, in case the Close All But This command doesn’t meet your needs. That’s her best tip on why and when to use this dialog box.
- Select which file to activate; but there are numerous faster ways to do this.
- Select which files you want to save; but then again, you would most likely use Save All.
When you’re working in MDI mode, you get an additional two buttons: Tile Horizontally and Tile Vertically.
See Tip 4.12 for more information.
She strongly recommends using Window Windows for navigation if you are using any sort of accessibility options or assistive technologies (for example, screen readers, screen magnifiers). Window Windows provides an easy and quick way to navigate among files and to close files.
Happy Programming! =)
“Visual Studio Tips, 251 ways to improve your Productivity in Visual Studio“, courtesy of ‘Sara Ford’
Sara Ford’s Blog
Right-click any file tab, and select Open Containing Folder. She loves this feature, although it is her second favorite tip. The previous Tip 4.3 is her all-time favorite. It’s great to be able to jump from the file to the folder on disk to look for stuff, to change attributes on the file, to do a rename, or whatever else. It is very, very useful.
Happy Programming!
Tip 4.3: You can copy a file’s full path from the file tab channel
“Visual Studio Tips, 251 ways to improve your Productivity in Visual Studio“, courtesy of ‘Sara Ford’
Sara Ford’s Blog
Now this is a feature she absolutely cannot live without. This was one of the best features added in Visual Studio 2005 (in her humble, biased opinion).
On the file tab channel, you can right-click and select Copy Full Path—voilà, you have the full path for that file.
In previous versions of Visual Studio (such as Visual Studio .NET 2003), you had to go to the Properties window and copy the full path from there. In even earlier versions, well, um, she doesn’t recall. (She started working at Microsoft in September 2001.)
Happy Programming! =)
“Visual Studio Tips, 251 ways to improve your Productivity in Visual Studio“, courtesy of ‘Sara Ford’
Sara Ford’s Blog
This is a really, really useful feature, but she’ll always remember how difficult it was for her to find bugs with it. That really frustrates a tester, when you can’t break a developer’s newly written code.
Right-click a file tab, and select Close All But This. This command closes all the other files in the editor, except for the currently active file, obviously.
And yes, you can bind it to a keyboard shortcut. The command is File.CloseAllButThis. In the General Development Settings, this isn’t bound to any keyboard shortcut, so have fun!
Happy Programming! =)
Tip 4.1: You can use Ctrl+Alt+Down Arrow to drop down the file tab channel file menu
“Visual Studio Tips, 251 ways to improve your Productivity in Visual Studio“, courtesy of ‘Sara Ford’
Sara Ford’s Blog
A fellow program manager and Sara were trying to out “Did you know…” each other about Visual Studio the other day in her office. She won with this one:
On the file tab channel, all the way to the right side, there’s an inverted triangle (that is, a drop-down arrow) that, when pressed, invokes the File menu drop-down list.
There are two “Did you know…” points here:
- You can press Ctrl+Alt+Down Arrow to show the File menu drop-down list. This keyboard shortcut is bound to the global scope, meaning you can press this chord anywhere in the IDE and get the File menu drop-down list to appear. The command is Window.ShowEzMDIFileList. In case you are curious, EzMDI stands for Easy MDI, representing the default tabbed document view rather than the multiple documents view, or MDI (multiple document interface).
- The File menu drop-down list supports type-ahead selection. If you have a lot of files listed, you can type the name of the file, and when there’s an exact match (meaning there isn’t a conflict), the focus will jump to that file in the list, allowing you to hit Enter to open it.
Happy Programming! =)
