Remove strange blue box in visual studio - visual-studio

This blue rectangle is fixed on the screen. Sometimes growing, shrinking and changing place.
tried the answer to this question:
In the Visual Studio SQL editor, how do I get rid of the boxes?
as I thought it might be related but didn't help.
How to get rid of it?

The box is drawn by Windows' Narrator feature for people with low vision. I recently accidentally toggled this myself by hitting winkey+enter. Hitting it again and moving the mouse cursor seems to toggle it back off again as well.
As mentioned below, depending on the narrator shortcuts configured on your system one of the following may work:
winkey+enter.
caps lock+esc
Full overview of narrator hot keys can be found here.

For some reason Winkey + Enter didn't work for me. However I found Caps Lock + Esc did the trick. See Narrator Shortcuts for more info

It looks like you have an extension installed which is adding that box. Try disabling extensions until you find the one that is causing this
Tools -> Options -> Extension Manager

Related

VSCode: Preview file in tab/panel

When previewing a file by clicking on it once in VSCode, is it possible to preview other files in the explorer by using the arrow keys, similar to Visual Studio? When I do it, it just selects the file, but doesn't preview it (unless I use my mouse). I'd provide a picture, but the upload isn't working right now, sadly. :(
I feel like that used to be a thing and I broke it at some point, but I could also just imagine it due to VS.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/66237216/12903844 has exactly what I was looking for!
Short summary: Up/Down + Space will enable you to preview a file, but you can also use 'multi-command' to macro it to just Up/Down (without having to press Space when selecting files this way).
Credit goes to Mark for answering it in the comments, just adding it here so the solution is marked. <3

Stop Debugging (Shift+F5) causing debugging to restart

I'm using Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition for development. I have observed that whenever I test web applications or websites using Ctrl+F5 and then stop the debugging (or close the browser), the debugging starts again, as if I pressed Ctrl+F5 again.
Initially I thought this could be because of a sticky ctrl key but I have checked and confirmed that sticky keys in my machine are not enabled.
I searched on the web and have observed that many others have also faced the very same issue. But Microsoft says that the issue is due to a sticky ctrl key. (Refer : http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/534915/stop-debugging-shortcut-key-shift-f5-causes-debugging-to-restart-instead-of-just-stopping)
Anyone else has any other ideas as to why this could be happening (in case I might have missed out on some updated forum)
Thanks a lot.! :)
I really like your question as this occurs to me occasionally and don't know why after many years & don't believe it's related to sticky keys.
There are only two ways I can stop the debugging in this situation:
Alt + D; E = I press Alt + D; to open the Debug menu then E for 'Stop Debugging' This is alternative hotkey combination that will work.
is to click the stop button on the debug tool bar.
(optional) Sometimes when I'm not able to press teh Alt + D I'm not able to get focus to the toolbar and I press ctrl 5 times. Somehow the sticky keys get stuck even though I didn't turn them on.
Hope that helps.
I too have this happen to me sometimes, and I too have disabled StickyKeys. I even see this sometimes when I have locked my computer. When this happens and I try to type in my password, the computer acts like I am pressing down control.
My only suggestion is to use the menus to stop Debugging, and then gently tap the Control key twice, and then try again. It always stops when I do this.
In the back of my mind, I wonder if it is due to conflicts of third-party utilities that intercept key combos for their triggers. SnagIt, Freesnap, AutoHotKey are three that I use, but when the problem is so intermittent, you can't really disable them and say, "yup, my problem went away."
This may sound simple and might not be the answer for you but it was for me. Somehow in Visual Studio 2015 my Shift+F5 got mapped to "Debug.Restart" and "Debug.StopDebugging" got remapped to Ctrl+Alt+Break. Not sure if Resharper somehow screwed up the shortcuts.
I was able to fix it by going to Tools... Options... Environment... Keyboard, searching for "Debug.StopDebugging" and assigning Shift+F5 to it.
I also had the same problem. I'm also using Visual Studio 2008. Just click tools>>option>>environment>>Keyboard. And then set
to "Default".
This happened to me when I upgraded VS to that disaster 16.6.x which changed Shift-F5 from Debug.stop to Debug.start.
Tools menu > Options > Keyboard fixes it. (It's a confusing dialog but you'll figure it out -- you're a programmer, ie IQ through the roof, right? Yeah!
Shift-Ctrl-F5 does restart.
I'm in my 50th year of programming and still loving it and making tons of money.
What a career this is!

What is the name of this colour scheme element?

I have an annoying problem with Visual Studio highlighting. I installed my favourite colourscheme (zenburn 2010), and I have found that when I'm in debug mode, this will happen when my application is paused:
I have run through the hundred or so colours in the settings window, but I am unable to locate the setting that will affect this background colour. It's not exactly a show-stopper, but I'd still really like to know how to solve this.
I have resharper installed in case that affects anything. I can't see how it would though.
I think you want either the Collapsible Region element, or the Selected Text element
Changing the background color of the Read-Only Region element solved the issue for me. (See this article for more detail.)

# shows solution navigator instead of typing an #

I can't seem to find a question on this, but it might be because I'm unable to find a good way to search for it...
I recently updated my installation of Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power Tools, and now every time I type # in a code window, I get a search window of some sort opened instead of the # symbol in my code. I can't find the key setting that triggers this, and it's beginning to be a real problem.
I'm on a Swedish keyboard, so to get # I press Alt Gr+2. I've gone through all the settings under Tools/Options/Keyboard that starts with "View.", but found nothing.
Can anybody help me delete this keyboard mapping?
Update: I just realized that the key mapping Alt Gr+2 is equivalent to Ctrl+Alt+2. But I still can't find what it's mapped to...
I found the problem in the comment thread on the VS team blog post on the Solution Navigator - it turns out this problem is built-in into the extension, and they're working on fixing it for the next release. (Basically, they're binding stuff to Ctrl+2 and 2, but VS also takes the Ctrl+Alt equivalents, which then are interpreted as Alt Gr...)
For now, disabling Solution Navigator solves the problem (but, obviously, makes Solution Navigator unavailable...), but hopefully there will be a fix out pretty soon.

Eclipse's tab double click on Visual Studio?

On Eclipse, whenever I double click a tab, it fills the workspace (by hiding all other views like project tree, console, etc).
Is there any way to do this on Visual Studio?
Note: i'm not looking for full screen, just want a way to declutter the workspace but still have access to menus.
Are you after this?
Set shortcuts for the Window.AutoHideAll function and for the Window.ResetWindowLayout function. In order for the ResetWindowLayout to work, you have to export your settings (make sure you select "All Settings") with all windows expanded and then import them again.
ResetWindowLayout will restore all windows to the way they were the last time you imported your settings.
Not with double click on tab, but you can do the same with Shift+Alt+Enter key combination.
This keyboard shorcut was changed to F11 from 1.9.1 vscode version.
All keyboard Shortcuts: https://code.visualstudio.com/shortcuts/keyboard-shortcuts-windows.pdf
I was looking for that, as well, and I now just got used to using full screen (Shift+Alt+Enter), which hides a little too much, which you seem to think, as well, but does in fact still show the menus.
Looks like drby got it on this one. Just FYI. I pinged the VS team to ask about this and here is the response:
"There is no way to reverse the command automatically. For it to work as a toggle we would need to save which toolwindows were auto hidden and which ones were not when the command was run, which we don’t do (it would cause lots of interesting persistence questions, across profiles and VS sessions)."
The idea of a "Unhide All" command is what I suggested. So if you hide all then you can unhide all as well. There might be some windows you don't want to unhide but the 1 or 2 extra windows is better than not having an unhide IMHO.

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