If I want to see the full documentation for a class or method in Visual Studio, I have to press F1. This opens an external browser window where I can look it up.
Now, I'd like to see the documentation within the IDE, in an integrated window, without having to mess around with a separate browser window. Additionally I'd like the documentation window to update as soon as I switch the cursor to another method/class/etc. This feature is fairly common in the Java IDEs.
Is there any way to achieve this behavior in Visual Studio?
You can install Help Viewer. See also Video.
If help viewer is already installed follow the instructions here to enable it:
When you install Visual Studio, you get the Help Viewer. To start reading help topics in the Help Viewer rather than on the MSDN download site, go to the Help menu in Visual Studio, select Set Help Preference, and then select Launch in Help Viewer. The off-line help topics for a given version of Visual Studio are available only after the final release of that version.
Beware, downloading help content for offline viewing can take a large amount of disk space!
One thing you can do is to be on any method and while pressing on control, click the method. It will open up the method or class metadata file which gives out information about the available properties and values to be passed while giving out a summary of the method/class.
Screen shot of IIdentityMessageService and what method it implements with a small desciption inside visual studio
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when I create a new project the first time I can see the Design viewer option, but when I close VS and reload the project the second time I can't see the design viewer anymore, I didn't find the solution please help!
When you open VS you may see the code page. If you want to see the designer view, click in the menu View and Designer. You can also use the shortcut SHIFT+F7. But first make sure, you opened the file in the project explorer.
I am using Visual Studio 2017 community. If I hit F1 anywhere in the IDE text editor nothing happens. What I really want is to highlight a method name or property, hit F1 and be taken to the online help page for that keyword, if its part of .Net.
How do I enable this? I cannot seem to find the setting to make this work, but to be honest this should be configured out of the box, right?
Ta!
Yes, It should be configured out of the box with F1 open Help page. Have you installed extensions like Resharper or other big Powerful tools? Then it could be overwritten.
Look in Tools-> Options->Enviroment-> KeyBoard and search for "Help.F1Help" there you see the Shortcut for Help
I'm trying to create a cool extension where I want to do something like below.
Once you have my extension installed, It will get the current line code of visual studio editor when you press some shortcut and then add something at the end of a current line of code.
P.S. I'm not building any analyzer I'm creating a productivity extension which will help people increase their productivity.
I have already gone through the MSDN documentation available for that but I'm really confused which one I should use. See the below link.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd885474.aspx
Can anybody who has created an extension guide me.
Is there a way to change how links are opened from the Output Window (not an Editor)?
Meaning, when the Output Windows detects a link, it's Ctrl+Click-able and opens in an Internet Explorer tab.
I'd like to change the target from IE to the Text Editor and still within Visual Studio.
There are solutions for changing the click behavior in an Editor, but I am asking specifically about the Output Window. I understand the answer might just be no.
There's a Visual Studio Extension that lets you open URIs in the browser (https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/46c0c49e-f825-454b-9f6a-48b216797eb5).
I've forked it and made some updates so that it will handle file:/// URIs as well, opening them in the Visual Studio editor or an external editor. I've published a debug version that hasn't been very heavily tested here. You can peruse the full source of my fork here, or the original source here.
This makes debugging/working with the BizTalk map/schema tools a lot better...
Can someone please explain to me what goes to the Output window in VS? Where do the messages there come from and do they have other use other than for debbuging?
Thanks.
The Output window is a set of text panes that you can write to and read from. Visual Studio defines these built-in panes: Build, through which projects communicate messages about builds, and General, through which Visual Studio communicates messages about the integrated development environment (IDE). Projects receive a reference to the Build pane automatically through the IVsBuildableProjectCfg interface methods, and Visual Studio offers direct access to the General pane through the SVsGeneralOutputWindowPane service. In addition to the built-in panes, you can create and manage your own custom panes.
Output Window (Visual Studio SDK)
This panel shows the actual info, that is spit from your application to the console (no matter debug or run mode). Also building, rebuilding and cleaning your project is described as operations there.
Check F1 for more info ;)
By default it either shows output from the build process, or debugger output. You can use OutputDebugString to display text in the output window while debugging.
There's not much else you can do with it without using an Add-In for Visual Studio.