I am a long time Visual Studio and Eclipse user, and now that I'm developing iPhone applications, I've need to use XCode 6. Does anyone know how to do these two really (seemingly) easy things in XCode 6:
Close an open file: There's no apparent button to close a source file once you've opened it. So, now I have a ton of open files that I don't know how to close.
Use tabs: If I have a bunch of files open, I've only been able to successfully switch between them by using the little left and right arrows by the file's breadcrumb.
Sorry for asking such a simple question, but my brain is wired in a completely different direction than Apple thinks it should be.
Close an open file: File > Close Window or File > Close Tab
Use tabs: File > New > Tab
Question:
Is there a way to make all files that are open in visual studio be highlighted in the solution explorer?
(I know there is a filter that you can filter it to show only open files but this dos me no good sense I am looking for a file that may not be open, I am not even sure what the name of the file is until I open it up and say there it is.)
Example Imagined GUI result: (Different colors are fine)
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B31DHM9TkK99S3pWSms3QXR2Qk0/edit?usp=sharing
(image of what i am thinking, can not post image right now)
Solution Explorer
-Solution
+Stuff
+More stuff
-Code
+MyOpenFile.cs (Highlighting)
+MyNotOpenFile.cs
+MyOtherOpenFile.cs (Highlighting)
+MyCurrentlyOpenFile.cs (Highlighting, maybe a different color)
(the one with the red under line could be the active tab)
Background:
I don't know if this happens to any one else, but I have been doing it a lot for years now. While working on something I go to open up a file in the solution explorer and it turns out that the file is already open, and so visual studios just sets that file as the active tab. If I were working In just one window that would be fine, but I have few tab windows open beyond the main window and they are normally on a diffident monitor, so when the tab becomes active I do not see it at all, because it is not on the main window. This is even worse when I go to preview a file.
Icing on this cake:
-If it would have an option to highlight the parent nodes of open files, i the example "controllers" and "content" folders would be highlighted as well.
-If there was something that would do this for vs 2010 as well would be great.
I am looking for all most any thing at this point, an extension, a style sheet some where to edit, or as a last resort a good reference to a "How to code Extensions for Visual studios" website.
Edit:
As a point Of clarification I am not looking for a way to locate a specific file in the solution explorer, I am looking for a way to make the files that are open look visually different, so that I know to look around a bit before thinking that VS2012 is crashing or the file is messed up.
try an extension called VS commands. It will help you locate the files in solution.
Or this extension:
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/d0d33361-18e2-46c0-8ff2-4adea1e34fef/
My VS2010 environment has the start page come up if I'm not opening a solution. From there, I can open one of the several items on the recent projects list or I can open a project from the link/button in the upper left. When I do that, I get an Open Project dialog that's pointed at my C:\workingvss (which is a convention that everyone on my team follows for where our code lives locally). But I virtually always want to browse to the project in a VSS database and I have to scroll up in the left-hand pane of the dialog to bring 'Microsoft Visual SourceSafe' into visibility. It seems dumb that I can't make it just start at the top of the pane, but if there's a way, I haven't been able to figure out how.
So I'm turning to you. Is there something I can do to avoid this click and drag every time I want to open a project?
I realize it's defaulting to the Projects location parameter set through Tools > Options > Projects and Solutions > General. But I think I need to leave that as is because I do want my stuff saved to that location during checkout.
I also think that if I removed ten (in my case) folders from the root of my C:, the left pane would show my VSS option, but I don't think that's even possible in this machine's case and not a reasonable solution in any case.
My question is related to, but not a duplicate of, How to change the default open file dialog path.
Thanks for your time!
This isn't a great answer, but it's my current no-tech work-around. If I make the Open Project dialog large enough to accommodate all of the lines it wants to display, then my VSS line is visible and I don't have to navigate to it. Luckily, Visual Studio remembers the size from use to use.
Xcode finally added tabs but the problem is that they behave very strange. For example they will keep a tab open only if it was opened to a new tab.
If you open a file just by clicking in the project tree, Xcode will close your tab as soon as you are clicking on another file in the tree.
Is is possible to make them behave like real tabs and prevent Xcode from reusing them? How?
I use a method similar to franks:
In Preferences > Navigation (or Preferences > General in versions of Xcode prior to 5) you can set Optional Navigation to Uses Separate Tab
Now opt-clicking a file in the file navigator will open it in a new tab
Better yet, opt-clicking links in the code opens the destination file in a new tab
The big feature missing is swapping to an already open tab containing the file if there is one (or staying in the current one).
UPDATE for 2020:
Finally, almost 10 years later, Xcode 12.x now appears to mostly resolve the issue described here. There is a new Navigation Style option in the Navigation settings panel that controls this behavior.
The behavior has some new quirks/design-choices that seem to make sense, but I'm still getting used to the new experience. For example, a tab will get re-used unless the file in that tab has been edited recently; such a tab is indicated with an italics title.
PREVIOUS ANSWER
I don't think you can currently get the behavior you desire (or I desire). While the tabs work like Safari, they don't work like tabs in other popular IDEs (Visual Studio or Eclipse). And for me this kind of sucks.
In general, I expect IDE tabs to keep more than 1 file open. So if I click a file in the project tree, I expect that it will switch to the tab I have opened with that file - if I have already opened it. Instead, XCode 4 changes the current tab to the file I clicked - making 2 tabs with the same file. Having 2 tabs with the same file is fairly useless.
This forces the user to scan the tab bar first to see if the file is currently opened; if it's not opened then you can look to the project tree. But if you click in the project tree first (which is what I tend to do) then you get punished because you will have just killed a tab.
This isn't really an answer insofar as it contains a solution; I mostly just want to join in the griping. But upvoting will make you feel better and prove Apple wrong. :)
The problem with Xcode 4's implementation of tabs is that Apple has implemented them as workspace tabs. In other words, creating a new tab essentially creates a new workspace, each with its own sub-panes with their configurations, etc. It's essentially a whole environment in each tab. There are a number of problems with this choice.
This differs from most IDE/text editors' implementation of file tabs wherein a tab (generally) represents a single file, and each file has its own tab.
The problem with workspace tabs is there are only so many potential different workspaces we could benefit from, severely limiting the actual use of tabs in this way. Beyond this, the additional workspaces just become a liability, introducing more things the user of the application needs to concern him/herself with: for example, what the navigator view is, what editor mode is active (standard, assistant, version), whether the debug console is open, etc. etc. Suddenly switching to a new tab means you now have to worry about getting the environment back in the form you need it, because there's a good chance the other tab wasn't left in the state you expect to find it in. This actually discourages the use of tabs because it introduces more work in the workflow.
File tabs don't have this problem (not counting special cases like split view panes) because all that's changing is the file you're looking at, not your whole environment. Moreover, if implemented properly, file tabs work great as an immediate history, allowing one to quickly switch back to a file that was worked in recently, with little effort. The only way to do this in Xcode is to explicitly set up a new tab environment for each file you want to work with, but you have to be careful not to change the file in that tab or your file all of a sudden becomes lost: again, more work for the user.
Workspace tabs are also significantly heavier-weight than file tabs, because there is much more to remember and switching workspaces involves much more than switching files.
The truth is (and I think most will agree with me on this), to a developer, file tabs are much more useful than workspace tabs, and as it stands Xcode still lacks a proper implementation of this feature that many would consider basic required functionality in an IDE/editor.
Xcode->Preferences->General->Double Click Navigation and from the list, choose Uses Separate Tab.
Well, not a real answer but my personal workaround. The real problem for me is, that a file opened in a tab goes away so easily in xcode 4. Finding a file again can be time-consuming, so I like them to be in a tab and stay there.
I solved this (somehow) for me by exactly identifying the actions I do which cause the tab to switch to another file and replace them by their equivalent actions which open a new tab instead.
Instead of single-clicking a file in the navigator, I always double-click which I have set to open a new tab
Most time I do not use the navigator, as it has a different state of opened and closed folders in each tab. Not useful for me. So I switched to using Option ⌥ Command ⌘ O. When opening a file from this list I keep ShiftOption ⌥ pressed. In the small window appearing I choose 'new tab'.
When clicking on links in code I press ShiftOption ⌥ Command ⌘, too, and open in new tab.
I keep two fixed tabs around for editing target-related settings and to view build results. I completely disabled all automatic tab switching in the prefs, because I noticed this distracted me to much.
I would really love to get something like the xcode 3 favorites bar in xcode 4, this was so simple to use..
I imagine my answer won't bubble up for a while, but if you want this to work like visual studio or intellij (or at least closer)
Preferences->General->Double Click Navigation->Uses a separate tab
Double Clicking a file now will stop opening it in a new window and open it in a new tab.
Single is still dumb and takes over your tab. But if you get used to double clicking (which I was already) this will save you some headaches. I suppose.
I absolutely hate how tabs work in Xcode. However, the only workaround i found that works decent is using the OSX tabs shortcuts:
CTRL + CMD + ->
CTRL + CMD + <-
I found my way in Preferences-Behaviors!
I hated Xcode 4 first for the tab issues discussed here, mainly because the debug information kept opening new files in tabs and changing the navigator
in Behaviors you can define a Debug tab and make the Run and Build jump there in various ways. in the Debug tab I give more space to navigators left and bottom
for similar reasons I have a Find tab, too
the other tabs are for files I am writing in. I start them with the .h which is usually small enough so I need only one view, and then with single clicks in the navegator I open 2-3 versions of the .cpp file so I can set them to the locations where the recent hot spots in the file are. then I close the navigators in those tabs
this does not invalidate the care and tricks given in the other answers here, but makes them far less hard
happy coding!
I found out that when pressing option a.k.a. alt when opening files in the navigator, you will jump to the tab already open with the file and a new tab will open in case it was not yet open.
This technique also works when opening files via cmdshift-O and opening the suggestion with option-enter in stead of simply enter...
Now, if there would be some way to make this the default, i.e. the need to keep pressing option all the time would be removed, that would be a big step forward.
Also I use Behaviors to keep my tabs from being recycled after test or build failures.
(Like other people, I totally mislike Xcode's tab behavior. Apple should take a look at IntelliJ...)
xcode tab bar is so suck, I think Apple should enhance the feature of the tab navigation to avoid followed 3 points.
1. double click a file will let xcode open another tab if it has already been there.
2. for more tabs, the tab will become small and thus I don't know which file in which tab, I want the tab show full name
3. for even more tabs, new tabs will be hidden, instead of two lines of tabs. I want to it show two lines of tab bars.
If you have the tab bar enabled (View/Show Tab Bar) and you double click a file, it appears in it's own window, with a single tab (Be sure the Tab Bar is enabled in both the new and old (main) windows).
Now all you have to do is drag that new window from its tab and drop it into the tab bar of your main window.
It will stay docked as a separate tab, showing that file.
To change the file open in that new tab, go Project / Reveal in Project Navigator, which opens the project navigator at the left hand side.
Tabs in Xcode 4 work like tabs elsewhere on Mac OS X, for example in Safari and Terminal.
I think it's associating my Web Service's CS files with the related ASMX files. But whatever's happening, I can't double-click to open the CS files - I have to "view Code" or it opens in the designer.
Anyone know how to turn off this automatic behavior? I just want to edit the code!
Try right-clicking, select "Open with...", mark "CSharp Editor" and select "Set as Default".
That works for avoiding the WinForms Designer.
I found this question when trying to deal with a similar problem. I had a C# class in a file and whenever I double clicked on the file it would try to open in design mode but design mode was meaningless for this class. I just want to see the code.
I found that adding the [System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategory("")] attribute to my class fixed this.
In the Solution Explorer view, click the "Show All Files" icon. This will put "+" symbol next to each of your files. Click the + and it will expand to show the .CS file which holds the ASMX's code. At this point, double click that file instead.
For some reason VS2005 seems to have this a bit backwards when it comes to webservices. To open a webservice in code view, double-click the .asmx file, not the .asmx.cs file.
I guess it makes a bit of sense, as there's nothing to "design" when it comes to a webservice, but it's counterintuitive if you've been working with .aspx files.
In my experience, if you find that the wrote editor, that is the non-default editor, is opening when double-clicking on a file within the Solution Explorer then something is wrong with the underlying project's User Options file (.user) or the solution's User Options file (.suo). (I am not sure which, but I suspect the settings are stored in the .suo file.) Deleting the the .suo and all project .user files solved the problem.
I personally, set the Form Editor as my default editor for forms at the beginning of a project. After the forms are stable and require less user-interface design changes, I switch the default editor.