Tips, Shortcuts & Features for the .NET IDE

Reference : MSDN.

Visual Studio .NET has quite a lot of useful options. Below are the compendium of short cuts, tips, features for the Visual Studio .NET IDE.

There is no doubt that by learning the keyboard shortcuts for an IDE you can increase your productivity tenfold. So here is a list of useful hints that I gathered.

1.       Multiple copy/pastes

Ctrl+Shift+V cycles through the clipboard ring. You can copy/cut multiple times from one area of code, then go to another area and paste them one after another.

2.       Vertical block selection

Press Alt and then select the area you want with your mouse.

3.       Incremental search

To incrementally search for text as you type, first press Ctrl+i. Then type the word you want to search. Hit backspace to clear a character and enter to finish. Pressing F3 after this will work as usual, i.e. search for the next occurrence of previous search.

Ctrl+i - Ctrl+i works like F3.

4.       Previous cursor positions

Ctrl+- i.e. Ctrl + Hyphen. This cycles you through the code positions you visited.

Ctrl+Shift+- to navigate in the opposite direction.

5.       Drag and drop code snippets

The Toolbox (Ctrl+Alt+X) window has multiple tabs. You can drag and drop code onto this window and copy it elsewhere. Some tabs do not allow dropping code into them; those that allow will have the appropriate icon. The General tab works for me.

6.       Matching brace/comment/region/quote

Ctrl+] takes you to the matching brace. It also takes you to the matching comment, region or quote depending on what is at the cursor now.

7.       Change IDE Startup page

When you load your .Net IDE, the default behavior is to load the Start Page. However for many developers, this is just and extra step to open a project, which also happens to load the Internet Explorer into memory. In the Option dialog, under Environment -> General Page, you are able to change the behavior to one of five options as below in screen shot.  

8.       Closing/Showing support windows

There are a bunch of necessary/useful windows in the Visual Studio IDE like

Properties (F4),

Solution Explorer (Ctrl+Alt+L),

Output Window (Ctrl+Alt+O),

Task List (Ctrl+Alt+K) etc.

However, they take up a lot of space. An easy way around this is to use the auto hide feature.

Open the window you want. Right click on its title and choose Auto Hide. The window will dock in whenever your mouse is not hovering over it.

9.       Tab groups - group code editor windows

If you have many source code windows open, you can group them logically using tab groups. Right click the tab of the code window and choose New Horizontal Tab Group. This will move the window into a split window, allowing you to see both files. You can add more files to this new tab group and also move files back to the previous group by choosing Move To Previous Tab Group.

10.   Track things you have to do with Task List

The Task List window (Ctrl+\,Ctrl+T) allows you to keep track of the things you have to do. Right click on the Task List window and choose Show Tasks|All to see a list of tasks. Ctrl+Shift+F12 to cycle through your list of tasks.

By default, comments marked with a TODO will appear in the task list.

11.   Edit Task List Comment Tokens

You can add your own set of comment tokens (like the TODO comment token). Goto Tools|Options|Environment|Task List|Comment Tokens and make your changes. You can change the priority appearance of each comment token too.

12.   Add Task List Shortcut

Add a shortcut to the task list with Ctrl+K, Ctrl+H. This will add the current line to the task list.

13.   Record and play temporary macro

Ctrl+Shift+R to record a new temporary macro. Press Ctrl+Shift+R to stop recording. Ctrl+Shift+P to play the recorded macro.

This works similar to *recording* in Vim. If you think you are going to be repeating a set of keyboard keys, then record them once and play them each time after.

14.   Auto-complete

Press Ctrl+Space or Alt+RightArrow to auto-complete the word. Intellisense suggestions may pop up a window if there is more than one possibility.

15.   Intellisense suggestions window

Press Ctrl+Shift+Space to bring up the intellisense suggestions window. When giving parameters for functions, I often need to escape the suggestions window to check another part of code. To bring it back, I used to delete a comma and then type it again; but this is easier.

16.   Word wrap

Ctrl+R Ctrl+R

or

Tools|Options|Text Editor|All Languages|General|Word Wrap

If you want to set this option for only one language, then choose the appropriate language instead of All Languages.

17.   Line numbering

Tools|Options|Text Editor|All Languages|General|Line numbers.

If you want to set this option for only one language, then choose the appropriate language instead of All Languages.

18.   Open Web Browser in IDE

You can open web browser in your IDE using Ctrl+Alt+R. or choose View|Other Windows|Web Browser.

19.   Favorites window

Your IDE also functions as a browser. To see your list of favorites, press Ctrl+Alt+F or choose View|Other Windows|Favorites.

20.   Bookmarks

Bookmarks are available through Edit|Bookmarks. Bookmarks allow you to mark places in your code that you would want to come back to.

·         Create/Remove Bookmark - Ctrl+K, Ctrl+K

·         Move to next bookmark - Ctrl+K, Ctrl+N

·         Move to previous bookmark - Ctrl+K, Ctrl+P

·         Clear all bookmarks - Ctrl+K, Ctrl+L

21.   Code Formatting

·         Auto-format selection - Ctrl+K, Ctrl+F

·         Convert to lower case - Ctrl+U

·         Convert to upper case - Ctrl+Shift+U

·         Comment selection - Ctrl+K, Ctrl+C

·         Uncomment selection - Ctrl+K, Ctrl+U

22.   Outlining

I like this feature that allows me to hide code that is irrelevant to what I'm currently working on.

·         Fold/Unfold the current code block - Ctrl+M, Ctrl+M

·         Unfold all - Ctrl+M, Ctrl+L

·         Stop outlining - Ctrl+M, Ctrl+P

·         Fold all - Ctrl+M, Ctrl+O

23.   Build and Debug

·         Build - Ctrl+Shift+B

·         Run - Ctrl+F5

·         Debug - F5

·         Cycle through build errors - F8

Remove Special Character using javascript

Hi Readers,

Some times we have to remove special characters from string. Here is the java script + Regexp code to remove characters from java-script string:

updatedString = Stringtobefiltered.replace(/[^\w\s]/gi, '')


One more regex expression which is generally required in many cases which allow users to imput alphanumeric characters and three special characters:

/^[a-zA-Z0-9_.:]*$/

The above regex will allow A-Z, a-z, 0-9,: , . and _ in input box.



Hope this will help you :)




Task Scheduling using GLOBAL File

Task Scheduling using GLOBAL File

 

<%@ Application Language="C#" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="System.Data" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="System.Data.SqlClient" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="System.Timers" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="System.Net.Mail" %>




<script runat="server">
    void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        System.Timers.Timer t = new System.Timers.Timer(30000);
        t.Elapsed += new ElapsedEventHandler(t_Elapsed);
        t.AutoReset = true;
        t.Enabled = true;
    }
    private void t_Elapsed(object sender, ElapsedEventArgs e)
    {
        SmtpClient smtpClient = new SmtpClient();
        System.Net.NetworkCredential basicCredential =
            new System.Net.NetworkCredential("a@a.com", "a");
        MailMessage message = new MailMessage();
        MailAddress fromAddress = new MailAddress("a@a.com");

        smtpClient.Host = "smtp.a.com";
        smtpClient.UseDefaultCredentials = false;
        smtpClient.Credentials = basicCredential;

        message.From = fromAddress;
        message.Subject = "your subject";
        //Set IsBodyHtml to true means you can send HTML email.
        message.IsBodyHtml = true;
        message.Body = "<h1>your message body</h1>";
        message.To.Add("a@a.com");

        try
        {
            smtpClient.Send(message);
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            //Error, could not send the message
            Response.Write(ex.Message);
        }

    }   



    void Application_End(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
       



    }
       

    void Application_Error(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
       



    }


    void Session_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
       



    }


    void Session_End(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
       



    }
      

</script>

Google map complete script based on Latitude and Longitude

Hello Developers,

Sometime we have requirement to show google maps on our websites or clients website and we need to show that google markers on particular location. I am writing this article for those who have very less experience in implementing google maps

Here is code snippet:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml">
  <head>
    <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
    <title>Google Maps API Sample</title>
    <script src="//maps.google.com/maps?file=api&amp;v=2&amp;sensor=false&amp;key=ABQIAAAAuPsJpk3MBtDpJ4G8cqBnjRRaGTYH6UMl8mADNa0YKuWNNa8VNxQCzVBXTx2DYyXGsTOxpWhvIG7Djw" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">

 
      function initialize() {
        if (GBrowserIsCompatible()) {
          var map = new GMap2(document.getElementById("map_canvas"));
          map.setCenter(new GLatLng(30.7343000,76.7933000), 13);
          var point = new GLatLng(30.7343000,76.7933000);
          map.addOverlay(new GMarker(point));
        }
      }

 
    

    </script>
  </head>
  <body onload="initialize()" onunload="GUnload()" style="font-family: Arial;border: 0 none;">
    <div id="map_canvas" style="width: 500px; height: 300px"></div>
  </body>
</html>


Output:

Hope this will help you :)