Question ONE:
I'm still pretty new to .net, but have used Visual Studio for a few recent projects. I'm now working a new project and I was wondering if visual studio had anything built in that would allow you to browse all of the details about a control, etc..
Is MSDN the best place to go for this?
For instance if I wanted to see of all the methods, properties, etc.. Is there anything inside VS?
Question TWO:
Can anyone recommend, books, resources, that deal specificially with Visual Studio? What each window does, etc.. I have used it enough to complete a few projects, but I haven't seen much in the way of exactly what everything does and why.
Thanks for any suggestions.
Use reflector (it's free!) to get in-depth information about classes etc. Visual studio also has a built-in Object Browser.
P.S. Reflector allows you to reverse engineer assemblies as well, allowing you to view the actual code of a class / method.
P.P.S. Google is still a developer's best friend. Need information on a control, search for it on the web. (Which will lead you to MSDN a lot of the times, but will also get you examples and loads of blog entries).
Question ONE:
You can use the Object Browser (menu View\Object Browser) to see a hierarchical list of all known assemblies, classes, interfaces, enums, etc...
This only gives the signature of each item and not the code.
If you want to see the code, use .Net reflector.
You can also use the Object Browser in Visual Studio. There is usually an icon for it at the top (by the Toolbox, Solution Explorer, etc. icons) or you can navigate to it (View -> Object Browser). When it opens, you will see all of the libraries currently referenced (system and third party) on the left hand side. It's hierarchical, so you can start drilling down. There is a search box at the top, if you want to look for a particular class, method or library. That looks at all the system libraries, not just the ones referenced in your current project.
For more help with the object browser, look here.
Q1:
In Visual Studio:
Above the editor there are 2 dropdown lists:
Left: Shows Classes
Right: Shows Class Members
or Click View > Class View: to see all the classes in the whole solution
I had a similar rub when I started using VS after I had done a lot of Java coding. I was used to the Java API documentation to research properties and such.
I found the VS equivalent IMO, here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229335.aspx
You can browse every class method, property, constructor, etc. right there. Their examples are decent.
In response to question 1, what I usually do is highlight the bit of framework code I'm interested in and hit F1 to bring up the documentation. For example:
Button myButton = new Button();
If you highlight the first Button and hit F1, you'll get an overview on Buttons in Windows Forms. If you highlight Button() and hit F1 you'll get the documentation on the Button class constructor.
In response to question 2, I'm not sure a book is the answer. I think reading a book on all the components of Visual Studio might be overkill. I'd say to keep on hacking away at your projects and page-fault information in via MSDN, Google, and StackOverflow as you need it. As with any IDE and framework, the more you use it the better you'll get at navigating and learning the ins and outs.
Related
I am building a Visual Studio extension (VSIX) with menu commands depending on the options for the extension. Its dynamic, what commands (how many) depends on the options.
I have a solution for it that uses the command-table, like: Dynamically add menu items
I would like to skip the command-table and build the menus totally programmatically, like: HOWTO: Package with commands created by code
The reason is to make it more dynamic. So if the user adds/changes/deletes in the options of the extension it would be handled dynamically (programmatically). On saving options the menu-command tree would be rebuildt. If I use a command-table I will have to add/delete nodes there to be able to solve it.
The thing I can not figure out is howto add the objects for "groups" and "menus" programmatically.
So I am out for the class/interface that has "AddGroup" or "AddMenu" as methods.
Is this at all possible or do I have to use the command-table? If it is possible I would appreciate links to code-examples for it.
Regards Hans
MVP Carlos Quintero has published sample code using IVsProfferCommmands3.AddNamedCommand that illustrates how to programmatically add menu items via the automation services (formerly utilized by the now discontinued add-in extensibility model).
https://github.com/visualstudioextensibility/VSX-Samples/tree/master/PackageCommandsCreatedByCode
While add-ins are no longer supported, the automation interfaces are still present. So you can use these, bearing in mind these menu items (aka commands) are temporary.
Also, the sample code here is a little outdated, using Package instead of AsyncPackage, and ProvideAutoLoad attributes. So you'll also want to read up on the following:
https://github.com/microsoft/VSSDK-Extensibility-Samples/tree/master/AsyncPackageMigration
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/updates-to-synchronous-autoload-of-extensions-in-visual-studio-2019/
Sincerely,
I have a C++/winrt project with a complex and dynamic xaml interface created in C++ code. Now I am moving to the latest VS 15.9.0 Preview 3, which has platform support for C++/Winrt and also allows use of the xaml designer in such a project. But I don't want to use the designer and have turned it off in Tools/Options/Xaml. The result is that none of my programmatic xaml elements appears. The project seems to expect me to enter these elements in a xaml code page, rather than using C++, e.g. Grid(), StackPanel(), view.RowDefinitions.Append(), view.SetRow() etc. The GeneratedFiles folder is now full of items that were not present in the previous project, yet can't be removed. Is it still possible to use the C++ interface for xaml, and what must be done to enable it if so? Thanks.
Ryan is correct: C++/winrt does support programmatic creation of xaml, and it works great. With the help of a couple of c++/winrt guys at MS I think I also know why my code was not doing anything. In the former version of my app I had declared MainPage as a C++ class, not a struct, and had assigned the starting Grid for the xaml by getting the current Window and setting currentWindow.Content(theGrid). But in the new template app MainPage is a struct, which might matter, and while setting window.Content that way no longer works, this does: this->Content(theGrid). Leaving aside some irrelevant issues about declarations in the BlankApp, this I think is the answer. Programmatic xaml works if you set that initial content as above.
Unfortunately, this is not the intended way to use this UI system. XAML-based UI systems are descendants of WPF, which relies on the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern.
This pattern intends three types of classes to make up your application: Views, which are primarily written in XAML, and only deal with displaying data they are given; ViewModels, which are the wrapper and translator to give the views data, and to give the models commands; and lastly, Models, which are your backend business-logic classes.
Your instinct to not trust the designer is reasonable - it generates messy and unidiomatic XAML code. But it is an excellent way to preview the way your XAML code looks.
To get back to your specific situation, there are real problems in the library's API that will be serious roadblocks to programmatically define a UI in C++. Instead, you will want to use XAML to declare the UI. Adding and removing grid column definitions is not something that is well-supported, but using StackPanels and DockPanels is the normal way to do this.
If you have more specific questions, feel free to open a new question here, but do bear in mind that you may want to search first under the tags mvvm and wpf in addition to xaml, c++-winrt, and winrt.
If you have more questions that are rather broad and may be too broad for the main site here, feel free to join the WPF channel on chat, but bear in mind that most of us don't have experience in WinRT specifically.
In Eclipse, there's a JavaDoc View which would display the JavaDoc of whatever the current or last selected element was. I'm trying to find something similar for C# in Visual Studio 2013, but I'm not seeing anything like is. Does it exist? If so how do I activate it?
Thanks!
There are many applications that can generate MSDN style documentation from your XML comments. Here are a few I have used and they work well
VSdocman:
http://www.helixoft.com/vsdocman/overview.html
SandCastle
http://sandcastle.codeplex.com
I found what I was looking for. In Visual Studio, one would use the "Object Browser" to get something similar to the JavaDoc view. To get to it, View->Object Browser.
It does behave differently than Eclipse's JavaDoc view. Rather than tying the documentation to the cursor in the edit view, the Object Browser has a search box where one could search for the object they wish to view documentation on.
I am looking for free extension that has one simple functionality which is sidebar file navigation like is in SuperCharger or Resharper (see attached screenshots). Sadly both of them are paid :-( Does anyone have a good alternative?
Visual studio has Class View window for a quite a while.
You can try Productivity Power Tools, with it, you can:
Expand code files to navigate to its classes, expand classes to navigate to their members, and so on (C# and VB only)
Search your solution, all the way down to class members
Filter your solution or projects to see just opened files, unsaved files, and so on
View related information about classes and members (such as references or callers/callees for C#)
Preview images by hovering over them, or preview rich information by hovering over code items
We've also added support for multiple selection and drag & drop.
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=VisualStudioProductTeam.ProductivityPowerTools
I know its an old question, but as i was looking for an alternative to supercharger // Resharper (for the navigation only) few days ago, and had looked on stack before doing my search (and as I found the answers not exactly what i was looking for) ...
After testing a few extensions I finally found a good alternative to those two paid solutions :
https://github.com/sboulema/CodeNav/blob/master/README.md
You can also just download it from the extensions menu , search for CodeNav .
Best.
Sorry for such a basic question.
After using MS Visual Studio for 15 years, I recently moved to Apple and its Xcode. So I am really newbie in this new tool. I can work with some very basic parts of utilities as Referencing outlets or such stuff, but there are a lot of other stuff there that I had never seen in Visual Studio (as file owner, accessibility reference, ...)
I am looking for a good tutorial on that. Any one knows any? Any suggestions will be appreciated.
Apple has very helpful documentation about their technologies: OSX and iOS
The best place to start using Xcode is Xcode 4 User Guide and Xcode Quick Start Guide
This is something like Properties menu in VS. the only difference is that you can simply change to Assistant editor and hold control+drag from each one directly to your code.
Remember this is based on MVC ( Model= data, View= what you see and Controller)
In fact view and model are almost separated and controller is the connector between them:
this may help in the picture above: everything is counted based on Controller: OUT-let can remind you OUT of controller: I mean commands from controller to something. and sender means what sends messages TO the controller. These will make codes just like delegate coding in Visual Studio when you drag and drop an object to the window and double click on them. The (id)sender is counterpart of (void)sender in VS.
watch the Stanford iOS class on iTunesU. It is very good and if you know programming it will be very fast. Make sure you watch the fall 2011 version, it is about iOS5 and xcode4.