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
No comments:
Post a Comment