Visual Studio Tip of the Day

 

I want to give a quick shout-out to Sara Ford and Zain Naboulsi for their great Visual Studio tips.  If you use VS in your day-to-day work, you owe it to yourself to browse these blogs: there's sure to be a thing or five that will save you time and effort.  I believe there are about 400 tips at present...and new ones coming every day.  Here are a few of my favorites: Dragging-and-dropping code onto the toolbox's General tab.  Discovering this was revolutionary.  Whether it's code that I use infrequently (e.g., an implementation of the IDisposable pattern) or something that I know I'll need to insert several times in the next few minutes, it's handy. Keeping recently used files from falling off the file tab channel.  Oh, how I hate to have to find the file I was just using in a dropdown list or Solution Explorer.  This keeps files ordered by usage rather than the order they were opened...and saves my sanity. Pressing Ctrl+D opens the Code Definition window.  Until I read this tip, I didn't know there was a Code Definition window.  I love being able to view definitions and declarations without leaving the code I'm working on. Searching for the currently selected string without bringing up the Find window.  Now the Find window can't cover the code I need to look at. Viewing your project in the Document Outline window.  I no longer have to scroll through the dropdown in the Properties window to find that control that missing control. Displaying external function names in the Call Stack window.  If, like me, you do a lot of managed/native interop, this is invaluable. Selecting a box of text.  Great for indenting columns in the middle of a table of data. So thanks Sara and Zain for the great work!  Please, please, please keep it up...As always, please leave a comment if you find this article useful.CheersDan

DISCLAIMER: The information in this weblog is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. This weblog does not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my employer.