Future Focus: Document Map Margin

We are continuing our series of posts about proposed features for the next version of Visual Studio. This post focuses on a new feature called Document Map Margins (DMM). Developers frequently work with huge source files that are difficult to navigate. The proposed DMM feature is designed to make it easier for you to find and track important features in your code and to visualize the overall structure of your file.

We are currently considering introducing two different views of your code. One might be called the Marker Bar view. It would be meant to help you find key areas in your code, such as breakpoints, errors, bookmarks, search results, etc. A second view, called thumbnail view, might present the developer with a condensed overview of the entire document. Both features are shown in Figure 1.

 

DocumentMap

Figure One: The proposed Marker Bar View is shown on he left, and the proposed Thumbnail View is shown on the right.

Please remember that Future Focus is designed to give you an overview of proposed features about which we would like to get feedback. We are not promising that any of these features will be part of the product, and these features may change substantially if they are released. The goal of this project is to give you a chance to comment on proposed features, letting us know if you think they are worthwhile, and whether you think our proposal is well designed. In this particular project, we are not looking for overall comments on the future of Visual Studio or the C# language, but rather comments on the Document Map Margin feature.

Please comment in the Future Focus release area outlined below in the resources section, rather than appending comments to this post. Thank you for your support and your interest in our .NET languages.

Resources

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