Speaking at DevDays 2010 in The Netherlands and TechDays in Belgium – Visual Studio Tips

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Update: You can watch the video of my TechDays Belgium presentation at https://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/2010/videos.aspx . Just search for "Sara Ford" as the speaker.

Update: I’ve updated the Visual Studio Tips Advance section for today’s talk. Cheers!

I’m speaking this week in the Hague, in The Netherlands at DevDays 2010. I’m giving several talks on Visual Studio this week, before we (speakers) head over to TechDays in Belgium for even more Visual Studio talks.

I always post all my content online before I give talks, so that those who attend my sessions do not have to rush trying to write down keyboard shortcuts or names of commands. They can simply sit back and watch.

This blog post will be updated over the next several days, as I continue to give talks. Consider this my personal wiki for the week =D

And make sure to follow Zain’s Visual Studio 2010 Tip of the Day series!

Visual Studio 2010 Tips – Part 1

Tip #0 Know your environment settings! For all my talks, I use the General Development Settings. (Tools – Options – Environment – Import / Export Settings)

Searching Tips

Tip #1 How to behold the power of incremental search

Command: Edit.IncrementalSearch

Shortcut: Ctrl+i

Tip #2 Ctrl+F3 to search for currently-selected word

Command: Edit.FindNextSelected

Tip #3 F3 to search for last thing you searched for

Command: Edit.FindNext

Tip #4 Customize what files to find in

Find In Files – Look in – Choose Search Folders

Tip #5 You can use a reg hack for customizing search results

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Find String Find=$f$e($l,$c):$t\r\n

Editing Tips

Tip #6 How not to accidentally copy a blank line

Tools – Options – Text Editor – All Languages – General, Uncheck Apply cut or copy to blank lines

Tip #7 How to cycle through the Clipboard ring

Command: Edit.CycleClipboardRing

Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+v

Tip #8 How to use box/column selection in the editor

Command: Edit.LineUpColumnExtend, Edit.LineDownColumnExtend, Edit.CharRightColumnExtend, Edit.CharLeftColumnExtend

Shortcut: Shift+Alt+Arrow

Tip #9 How to use multi-line edit

Shortcut: Shift+Alt+Arrow (with nothing selected)

Tip #10 You can copy a file’s full path / open windows explorer from the file tab channel

Command: File.CopyFullPath

Tip #11 You can use Ctrl+. to show a smart tag

Command: View.ShowSmartTag

Tip #12 Drag and drop code onto the toolbox’s general tab

Shortcut: Ctrl+Alt+x for Toolbox, enter to insert text into Editor

Customizing Tips

Tip #13 You can insert a snippet by pressing Tab Tab

Type in snippet shortcut, then press Tab Tab

Tip #14 You can create temp or throw away projects

Tools – Options – Projects and Solutions – General, uncheck Save new projects when created

Tip #15 Change text editor font size via keyboard (Accessibility macros) or use the new Zoom control

Command: Macros.Samples.Accessibility.DecreaseTextEditorFontSize

Command: Macros.Samples.Accessibility.IncreaseTextEditorFontSize

Tip #16 How to open a file without any UI

Ctrl+/ (or whatever Tools.GoToCommandLine is bound to)

alias fo file.openfile

fo <filename>

Tip #17 Guidelines in the editor registry key hack – You’ll need an extension to do this for VS 2010. More after my Visual Studio 2010 Tips Advanced session

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Text Editor  String RBG(128,0,0) 5, 20

Tip #18 You can create a macro for your import/export settings

Tools – customize – commands – macros – drag and drop macro to toolbar

Tip #19 How to not show the start page (or have the last loaded solution open)

Tools – Options – Environment – Startup, At Startup

Tip #20 File tab channel registry hack – No longer needed for VS 2010!!! Tools – Options – Environment – Document, insert files from right

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0 key, you can create a DWORD UseMRUDocOrdering = 1

Tip #21How to show Misc Files Project to keep your files around

tools – options – environment – documents, show miscellaneous files in Solution Explorer

Tip #22 Edit project file from within IDE (unload project)

Unload project, edit project, reload project

Debugging Tips

Tip #23 You can use tracepoints to log stuff in your code

Right-click in indicator margin, select breakpoints, select Insert Tracepoint

Tip #24 How to get the find source dialog back – Much better experience in VS 2010!!! In the “No source code” window, there’s now a “browse for source” link

Solution Properties, under Common Properties – Debug Source Files, Delete Do no look for these source files edit boxcontents

Tip #25 You can disable the exception assistant

Tools – Options – Debugging – General, uncheck Enable the Exception Assistant

Tip #26 XML Visualizers

Visual Studio 2010 Tips – Part 2 (Advanced)

This is still a deep dive into the IDE, and not about coding or actually writing extensions.

For this talk, I’m going to cover a few must-have extensions for Visual Studio 2008, and then go straight into new features and extensions.

Here’s the list of what I’m going to cover:

Must have Visual Studio 2008 Tips

Tip #1 – Behold the power of incremental search

Tip #2 – Customize Find in Files / Registry edit to simply Find results window

Tip #3 – How not to accidentally cut/copy a blank line

Tip #4 – How to open a file without any UI

New Visual Studio 2010 features

Make sure to follow the new Visual Studio 2010 tip of the day with Zain!

Tip #5 – How to use Multi-line edit

Tip #6 – How to insert files from Right to Left in File tab channel

Tip #7 – Automatic Highlighting of Symbols

Tip #8 – IntelliSense “Sub-String” and Pascal Casing searching

Tip #9 – IntelliSense consume first / suggestion mode

Tip #10 – They Fixed the VB Smart tag bug

Press Ctrl+<period> to invoke smart tag, but now in VB, the first option in list is automatically selected, so you can simply hit <Enter> without having to first press the down arrow.

Tip #11 – New HTML and JavaScript Code Snippets

Tip #12 – Improved Outlining Collapsing / Expanding

In VS2010, you can select anywhere within the code block to collapse the region. You no longer have to click just the ‘-‘ box in the outlining margin to collapse the region.

Tip #13 – Navigate To

Tip #14 – Call Hierarchy

Tip #15 – Mutli-monitor Support

You can now drag out file tabs from the file tab channel and treat them like tool windows. Also, both these file tabs and tool windows will listen to WindowsKey + Arrow to snap to the monitor’s edge. use ctrl+DoubleClick to put either file or tool window back within Visual Studio in the “tabbed document” state.

Tip #16 – Zoom / Ctrl+Mouse Wheel

Tip #17 – The New and Improved Datatips

Tip #18 – Labeling and Sharing Breakpoints

Tip #19 – Getting Started with IntelliTrace

Tip #20 – WPF visualizer

Visual Studio Extensions

Tip #21 – How to Install Extensions

Tip #22 – Walkthrough of a few extensions

Tip #23 – Getting started writing your own extensions

MSDN Sample used in today’s talk

Tip #24 – How to search project templates

Tip #25 – Add Reference Dialog Improvements

Thank you!