Remembering keyboard shortcuts can often be difficult but they can also save you quite a bit of time. If you go to Tools/Customize and check the option for Show shortcut keys in ScreenTips, then you’ll be reminded of the keyboard shortcut for any item on the toolbar when you hover over the icon.
Happy Visual Studio’ing
I’ve already posted about the import / export settings feature, but then I saw this MSDN Forum thread. I figured this would make for a better tip of the day than just a generic explanation of how import / export settings works, especially for people who are quickly search for tips.
Use the Import and Export Setting Wizard:
Note: I’m using David’s answer from the forums, since he’s steps look nicer than mine did =)
Happy Visual Studio’ing!
Jason asked a great question yesterday, so i’m making the answer today’s tip of the day.
Put the snippets out on a share. Then in Tools – Code Snippet Manager, press the Add button and give it the UNC share.
Now go to Tools – Import Export Settings, Export, and choose just to export just the Code Snippet Locations to a file. Lastly, send out that .vssettings file to those on your team.
Happy Visual Studio’ing!
Too often I see people struggling to get the font size just right in the Editor for presentations. They go to Tools Options Fonts and Colors, change the size, close the dialog, but the size isn’t big enough (or it’s too big), so they have to go back and make more tweaks.
The other day I posted about the Accessibility Macros. Here’s how you can bind the increase and decrease font size to keyboard shortcuts (and also how you can put it on the toolbar as Up and Down buttons). Remember, you can always go to Tools Options Fonts and Colors and manually set the size. These macros just do that for you.
How to bind the Increasing / Decreasing Font Size Macros to a keyboard shortcut:
How to add increase / decrease font size to the toolbar
Happy Editing!
One of the big new features of the Visual Studio 2005 release for the Editor team and for the language teams is Code Snippets.
To use code snippets in the editor, bring up the context menu and choose “Insert Snippet” or "Surrounds With" depending on language.
To manage code snippets in the editor, go to Tools – Code Snippet Manager.
More info on Code Snippets can be found at
Code Snippet – Schema Description
Code Snippets – a way to be more efficient in writing code
Let me know if you have any questions about code snippets. More tips about code snippet coming soon.
Happy Editing!
Update: Sean has a much better workaround at http://blogs.msdn.com/vseditor/archive/2005/04/26/412307.aspx
Sometimes being a QA reminds me of when I was a soccer referee – you’re only as good as your last call or the last bug you missed.
I’ve seen a couple of MSDN forum posts now about missing Brief and Emacs keybindings, so I figured this issue merits a post here.
It’s a known issue that the Brief and Emacs keybindings are missing from the Beta 2 Standard SKU. The workaround, as stated in the Beta 2 Readme is as follow:
Install Visual C++ Express SKU to the same folder as Visual Studio Standard SKU
Let’s see how transparency works here about how this bug came to pass. Can’t wait to view the comments. We have lots of different runs on lots of different builds, Skus, platforms, different applied vssettings files, different operating systems, and different languages. At some point in time, we had a run against the Standard SKU, where the Brief and Emacs nightlies failed because the keybindings were not present. I incorrectly analyzed the failure as a lab/installation issue, because there was only one machine available, so I couldn’t compare it to anything else. First lesson learned is that I should have installed the Standard SKU on an ad-hoc machine and verified it, but I was swamped for those couple of months (very very swamped). We were supposed to have another Standard SKU run the next week or the week after that, but the run schedule was trimmed back, and I forgot about the Standard SKU issue with everything going on. Second lesson learned is that I should have setup a reminder to double-check such issues after a week or two.
Cry your pardon, sai, I have forgotten the face of my father…
I don’t think I can talk (yet) about how many bugs I’ve found during the last full test pass, or how many test cases I executed per day for those weeks, or how many bugs I found that did make the beta 2 bar to justify missing this bug. I’m hoping this is the worst bug that got though. I’m pretty confident you’ll find a high quality Beta 2 release for the Editor. And if not, you know where to find me =)
I wrote the Accessibility Macros for Visual Studio 2005, my proud 131 line contribution to the product.
There are 4 macros
To view the macro code, go to Tools – Macro IDE. Then open the Project Explorer in the Macro IDE. Double-click on Samples, and open Accessibility. You can run the commands from there or bind them to a keyboard shortcut.
Happy Editing!
Go to Tools – Options – Keyboard and set “Keyboard mapping scheme” to either Brief or Emacs. Press OK.
Whenever you are in the Editor, you’ll experience the editor emulation. To get back to the Visual Studio defaults, just set the “Keyboard mapping scheme” back to Default.
Happy Editing!
Here’s an old post of mine about the new Tool Window docking model, the File Tab Channel, and the IDE Navigator in Visual Studio 2005.
http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford/archive/2004/05/14/132065.aspx
This tip is for Visual Studio 2005. We have a new feature called the IDE Navigator. When Ctrl+Tab is bound to Window.NextDocumentWindowNav, the IDE Navigator will pop up, showing all available tool windows and files. You’ll need to hold down the Ctrl, kinda like Windows Alt+Tab dialog. If you have Stick keys enabled (Press shift key 5 times), you can just press Ctrl, then Tab, and the dialog will remain up.
If you do not like this new feature, and want the previous Ctrl+Tab behavior to just navigate to the next file, you can follow these steps to disable it. http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford/archive/2004/11/15/257962.aspx
Happy Editing!