Visual Studio 2003 tip #1: Stop the solution explorer flashiness when opening a project!

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A quick note on why I blog about Visual Studio 2003 aka Everett -

  • Its a released product so devs are probably interested in knowing its power features and tips and tricks.
  • I was heavily involved in getting it released for the C# team, so I have a somewhat sentimental attachment to the product.

Ok, so onto tip#1. One of the complaints we got in Vs7 was that if you had a multi project solution, with many files open in it and you reload the solution, the solution explorer just flashes around for a while. This is happening because the project system tracks the active file as it opens it and it scrolls back and forth among the files in the solution explorer giving it this flashy appearance. A number of customers complained about this, so we provided a setting to turn it off. This is under Tools.Options.Environment.Projects and Solutions.Track Active item in Solution explorer. Go ahead and uncheck that. Voila, less eye strain.