Ok, if you're like me, you've accidentally dragged one of the many, many panes in Visual Studio around and spent some tedious time getting things back in order again.
Is there any way to lock down all the panes in Visual Studio so they cannot be dragged and placed elsewhere ?
When you have your pane layouts (as well as your fonts, toolbars, colour schemes and whatnot) the way you like them, export your settings (Tools, Import and Export Settings) and give the file a sensible name. Then if you have a spot of accidental dragging, just import your saved ones. This is better than Reset Layout if your preferred layout is not the default.
As far as I know, no. But everything for getting for working with tabs and tab groups is inside the "Window" menu item in VS. But if you want to reset everything back to the way it was why not try:
Window -> Reset Windows Layout
You might also want to check out this Arranging and Using Windows in Visual Studio, I think you might be able to create a workspace, save it and if needed reset back to it after you moved windows around.
Export your settings according to Mar's answer and then check out this extension:
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/a79072f7-3109-44a0-95c0-9c50e729d6a3
A real lifesaver :)
Feature request on User Voice:
Lock/Unlock Docked Window Layout
You can reset Visual Studio windows back to the default by going to Window->Reset Window Layout (Visual Studio 10). Other versions have something similar. This helps the tedium on dragging the windows back in order.
Related
I use different window-setups for Visual Studio depending on whether I'm at work, and have three monitors available, or e.g. at home, where I typically only have my laptop.
I've found a setup I like for each situation, and saved these using the export wizard, as shown below; for those who might not be aware, this can be done with the opton Tools -> Import and Export Settings.
I like the ability to do this, but I'd like it even more if I could do it without having to click a whoping 9 (!!) times to switch from one mode to the other. Ideally, I'd like to be able to "quick-switch" between home- and office-mode with just one or two clicks, but any improvement would help.
I know this might sound like an insignificant issue (which I suppose is true), but it's been bugging me for a while, and the only "improvement" I've been able to come up with so far is to add a button to the toolbar, as shown below. All this does though, is let me start the wizard without opening the Tools menu.
I can't possibly be the only one using this, so I'd like to know if there are any better ideas or solutions out there?
Visual Studio 2015 and 2017 support Loading and Saving different Window Layouts without using the Import/Export settings feature.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4k7zyeba.aspx
Switch between the layouts
To switch between layouts, use the Keyboard shortcuts, or from the main menu choose Window > Apply Window Layout.
You can also create toolbar buttons that switch directly to a layout:
I have a multi-monitor system, and Visual Studio set up like this:
The main windows on the left, stuff like Solution Explorer, Output and Error windows on the right. When I want to open any file from the second monitor, the new tab also gets opened there. However, I rather want new tabs to appear in the tab well on my main monitor. Is there any setting (or extension) that can achieve that?
It is difficult to tell what causing it. Resharper and Productivity Power Tools both have an influence on how your document windows are managed.
A few options:
Try dragging the new window that is opening on the wrong screen and dock it; VS might remember this.
Check/review all the options for Resharper and the Productivity Power Tools.
Check that you don't have any additional R# extensions installed.
Export your current settings and reset your environment.
Disable extensions one at a time. A common approach to solving a problem by stripping things back until it works again.
I remember having some problems years ago when I ran a multi-monitor setup (at one stage 3+ screens), however now I do all development on a Surface Pro 3.
Has the menu & toolbar customization functionality in VS2010 been reduced?
I can't seem to be able to select an icon for an added command, nor set it to be icon-only. Previous versions of Visual Studio supported this functionality and even allowed the creation/editing of custom icons.
Is this something that has suffered as a result of the move to the WPF-authored UI or am I missing something?
Seems like this functionality was cut from Visual Studio 2010. This post has some info in the comments: Customizing Visual Studio 2010
Specifically - "Unfortunately assigning or editing icons to commands through Customize dialog is not possible in VS2010. It is one of the features got cut for lack of time. This is however something we'll consider adding back in next version."
The reply also has a longer explanation of a workaround.
As noted in the link mentioned in the answer from #Gordon Mackie JoanMiro, the REASON for the reduced functionality is that the VS Shell team migrated the entire UI (shell and command system) from Win32 to one based solely on WPF. This was a gargantuan task, I would imagine. However, a couple workarounds are now available:
You can export previously saved settings from VS 2008 and import them into VS 2010. That includes command bar customizations (as noted by #Don)
A more recent blog-post contains detailed instructions for using a new extension to VS2010 (available on Visual Studio Gallery) that allows users to change the images on the command UI. (Note that the old drag&drop customization interface is still not supported in this new extension.)
If you have custom icons, any attempt to make ANY changes to the tool bar will result in the custom icons disappearing and being replaced by text when you restart VS2010.
The only way I found to get my custom icons without text into VS2010 is to open VS2008, set up all of the tool bars the way I want, including custom icons, then export the settings (Tools| Import and Export Settings). Then open VS2010 and import those settings. Tedious, I know, but it allows me to have a down arrow icon that searches for the next instance of the word my cursor is on.
I have been trying to customize VS2010 toolbars/keyboard and what took a few minutes in previous versions takes hours now. The new system looks real pretty but is useless in practice. Apart from the fact you just can't do (like change the appearance of buttons as mentioned above) the things you can do are extremely time-consuming and annoying.
Why is it every new version of VS loses something really useful? Other examples:
VC++5 introduced a new HTML help system. Pressing F1 on a function name used to immediately show help for that function. After VC++5 getting context help became annoyingly much slower, and is still very slow (and inaccurate).
VS.Net (aka VS2002 or VC++7) had a useless bookmark system compared to VC++6. VS2010 bookmarks are better but not perfect.
VS.Net removed the search state buttons "whole word", "case sensitive" etc. These were possibly the most useful buttons ever as they quickly allowed you to see why a search may have failed.
I found a great extension: CommandingImage
It does not have an icon editor, but you can create your images as 16x16 png format (for transparency) and import it (I recommend Paint.Net)
Dave, here's how to add toolbar buttons:
1) in the IDE, find the down arrow looking thing on the far right of a toolbar and click on Add Remove Buttons, Customize
2) in the Customize window select the Menu Bar radio button then select the appropriate menu bar that you want to add a button to
3) click the "Add Command..." button
4) select the appropriate Category and Command button that you want to add, then click OK.
The command button you selected will be added to the menu bar you selected. You can move the button up or down.
I think this is what you are looking for.
Good luck!
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.
I'm having a weird issue with Visual Studio 2008. Every time I fire it up, the solution explorer is about an inch wide. It's like it can't remember it's layout settings.
Every un-docked window is in the position I place it. But if I dock a window, it's position is saved, but it's size will be reset to very-narrow (around an inch) when I load.
I've never come across this before and it's pretty annoying. Any ideas?
The things I've tried:
Saving, then reloading settings via Import/Export.
Resetting all environment settings via Import/Export.
Window -> Reset Window layout.
Comination of rebooting after changing the above.
Installed SP1. No improvement
none of which changed the behaviour of docked windows. (Also, definitely no other instances running..)
I do run two monitors, but I've had this setup on three different workstations and this is the first time I've come across it.
I had the same problem. It turned out that if the VS window was non-maximized, it was really
small. So after making the non-maximized wider, the problem disappeared.
I occasionally get this bug, and others related to layout/fonts/colouring etc. A little trick I've found is use the Tools -> Import and Export Settings, export your current settings once you've got everything setup as you like, then close and reopen Visual Studio and import. Hopefully that'll sort you out.
In 2005 there were some little bugs with viewing Project/Solution property panels when the Solution Explorer wasn't in its default position, docked on the left of the screen - I don't know if that's changed in VS2008, but you might want to put it back there and see.
Now, when are we going to get decent MultiMonitor support?!
Maybe you're closing Visual Studio while some other instance is still alive. The settings of the last instance that is closed is the one that will be applied.