Visual Studio 2015 is nice and all, but it's very hard to use when having multiple instance open. I have my Taskbar on the right, and this is what it looks like:
Any ideas on how to clear this up and make it easy to select the project I want, without hunting around?! Extensions welcome.
What do you guys do? Or should I utilize my memory powers more and remember which is which heh.
In VS 2013, there was VS Commands which helped, but they are yet to update it for VS2015...
One suggestion was to have my taskbar at the bottom of the screen. To me this is not feasible on a wide screen because you're losing even more height, where as you generally have more width that you can afford to lose...
I then tried it at the bottom, and it's even worse, since you fit less items in, and they group sooner, so you'd have to hover over VS before you can pick which one to switch to.
Update
As Sergey Vlasov mentioned, here is the window title change in action. Very nice solution, thanks!
You can create short abbreviations for your solutions using the Visual Studio Window Title Changer extension.
Related
I'm having a problem trying to move the design form window in visual studio, Picture
The designing window is on the top left, The reason is the space, another picture is
As you see, When I open the toolbox, It doesn't let me view the window anymore, while there is a huge unused space, It'd be really great if I can move the designing form to use all of the space I have on my monitor
I have tried googling a lot for this problem, I haven't found any problems matching to mine, It might be a very stupid simple thing, But I have no idea, or at least I googled unmatching keywords to the other people that had the same problem
Click the fixed key to dock the toolbox pane so it doesn't overlap the form designer.
Or as #Jimi said, drag and drop the toolbox pane somewhere else.
If you accidentally close it, you can find it in view->toolbox
The icon for Visual Studio on my Windows 7 taskbar is animated with a green bar moving left to right. What does it mean, and how can I stop it?
http://i.imgur.com/v1AEcue.jpg?1
I've not got any extensions installed, but I do have resharper (version 7 until I can afford to upgrade). I can't find anything relevant through google, and I can't see an option in the options panels.
The animation is used to represent progress. It's the same as for file copies (for example). I've seen ReSharper do this while running unit tests. Perhaps that, or maybe another extension?
I know this is an old post, but I am still experiencing the issue where the animation persists even though the tests have long finished (with VS2015 and Resharper 2016.1.2).
One way to get around this problem is to disable taskbar animations altogether:
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Closed 11 years ago.
We have seen that office has the ribbon UI since 2007. Now is 2010 and we all feel the great productivity the ribbon has brought to us.
My question is why Visual Studio, now 2010, still not use the ribbon? What do you think? Please share.
Ribbon its a great user interface to organize tools like buttons and some kind of small items.
But it doesn't work well, (or at least it's very difficult to achive) when the user interface has to be very personalizable as Visual Studio has to be. And there's also the problem of many windows that are not toolbars, like the solution explorer or the many different designer, they can't be placed very easily.
Whili I'm not saying it's impossible. There is a lot of features that would have to be rebuilt to accomodate a ribbon.
From MSDN Ribbon User Experience Guidelines
Command scale
Is there a large number of commands? Would using a ribbon require more than seven core tabs? Would users constantly have to change tabs to perform common tasks? If so, using toolbars (which don't require changing tabs) and palette windows (which may require changing tabs, but there can be several open at a time) might be a more efficient choice.
For efficiency and flexibility, do users need to make significant changes to the command presentation contents, location, or size? If so, customizable and extensible toolbars and palette windows are a better choice. Note that some types of toolbars can be undocked to become palette windows, and palette windows can be moved, resized, and customized.
Because of some of this reasons I believe Visual Studio works better in a toolbar-based interface
PS: While I don't believe Visual Studio will implement the ribbon, Autodesk products like AutoCAD are very good examples of very complex ribbon-based application.
I kind of think Ribbon would be as bad for Visual Studio as those silly button bars. Working quickly in visual studio is all about good navigational keyboard shortcuts, not mouse clicking.
I have been using Office 2007 for over a year now.
The answer is simple, the ribbon interface is an almost purely cosmetic addition that in fact still slows me down dramatically.
It looks cool, and I like the fact it has more "text" and larger icons from a "Learning" perspective. But after you have "Learned" an interface the ribbon gets in the way. I find the excessively "verbose" text is distracting and causes me to spend more time looking for the desireable command.
Effectively it is just a menu turned inside out and sideways that causes you to have to click far too many times to perform actions. additionally the layout is very unnatural, it begins at the top then switches to the bottom "chunks" then goes into random left to right and top to bottom sections with possible sub menus.
This statement in the original post to me is completely inaccurate.
... Now is 2010 and we all feel the
great productivity the ribbon has
brought to us ...
I end up putting ALL the commands I normally use on the quick access toolbar and "hide" the ribbon to make up for the screen real estate it steals.
If it was put in VS I would do the same thing, add all the common commands to the quick access toolbar and "Hide" the ribbon.
Not really an SO thread, but I think the rationale behind not moving the VS interface to the ribbon was that it is meant for end users, who are typically non-technical. Users of Visual Studio do not fall in that camp (typically ;)) and there would definitely need to be a lot of usability testing and allowing developers to customize the interface to get it to where they're comfortable.
From this MSDN thread, a Microsoft employee marked this as the answer:
I once asked that question too, and the answer was then that the audience for the ribbon are the end-users. Since it uses much space and since the developer is an experienced user, there is no need for ribbon support in Visual Studio.
I agree that they should bring the ribbon to VS because the stacked command bar UI is dated and ugly. I have to look at that garbage for 8-12 hours per day. Let's not even get me started on how frustrating it is when a contextual toolbar grows the height of the toolbar and shoves the top of the text editor down.
But you're unlikely to get anything more than opinion here which is not really the right forum. I'd post it to http://connect.microsoft.com.
I've never found an "ideal" layout for coding in Visual Studio. I have a three-monitor setup, but it seems that the solution explorer/properties/output/errors/whatever panes are always getting in the way or hogging screen space. It's a bit open-ended, sure, but do you have an "ideal" layout with the myriad of floating/dockable/anchored setups for specific windows? For instance, I like to split vertical code panes between two screens, and typically the solution explorer is anchored to the right of the right-most code pane, but that chews up screen real estate that I'd rather have for the code. I was thinking of floating those sorts of things off to another screen.
Apparently VS 2010 will do a LOT more for multi monitor setups. ScottGu went over this at DevConnections 2008, and a few more times, usually wherever he goes.
I got the impression that the MDI or tabbed codefiles might be able to be detached from the IDE, and float/draggable onto another monitor.
As it stands today in VS 2008, Solution Explorer, Immediate Window, etc are detachable and be able to float onto another monitor, separate from the main IDE.
Like many SO people, I'm in front of a computer almost all day. I like having a dark theme for Visual Studio (easier on the eyes), but since the rest of Windows and apps (explorer, dialogs, Outlook), have the full white background, it's even harder to switch between nice dark VS and sunshine bright Windows.
I tried a UXTheme.dll patch but couldn't find any dark themes that worked across Visual Studio and Windows apps in general. Any suggestions?
Edit: To be clear, I'd like no or almost no white. No scrollbars, menus, etc.
I don't think you're going to find a Windows theme that can accomplish your task. Many software applications do not adhere to colors specified in Windows preferences and are not at all customizable--Notepad, for example, is black text on a white background, end of story.
For themes in general, Microsoft has released two official XP themes within the last year that may be worth looking at:
Zune
Embedded
If you are planning on using a modified uxtheme.dll file, you can check out Luna Element Black, which is one I have used for well over a year now.
If you are this passionate about not having white areas visible in some of the programs you use, perhaps you need to find new applications that provide similar features but also offer customization in terms of fonts and colors--for example, using Notepad++ instead of Notepad, which gives you an almost exhaustive amount of customization possibilities.
May be not exactly what you are looking for, but this is a dark color scheme for visual Studio (2005 or 2008) you may use in complement of UXTheme.
Off course, they are other dar color schemes for Visual studio, like this one (Jeff has one also).
But I am not sure there is one tool that applies to all windows, including Visual Studio.