I am using visual studios 2008. My laptop has the max screen res of 1366x768.
What can i do to get more reading space? i was thinking of making the font smaller but it would be more helpful if i can make everything smaller (toolbar icons, text, etc)
The only improvement i done so far was remove a bunch of things under the toolbar so i have only one line. Actually for this project i remove the standard bar so i have have the solution and text directly under the menu with no toolbar. What else can i do to maximize reading space.
Tools > Options > Environment > General > Uncheck "Show status bar"
Tools > Options > Text Editor > All Languages > Uncheck "Navigation bar"
Install the "Hide Main Menu" extension available here.
Enable Auto-hide the taskbar in your Windows Taskbar properties.
That should get you at least 5-7 more lines.
Dual screens. The more pixels the better. I like 1920x1280 extended to across a matched monitor with vertically split tabs.
Probably not the answer you are looking for, but really, it HELPS A LOT.
Ok ok:
Try Lucida Console as a font - it's readable at 8pt - and fixed width!
Hit Alt+Shift+Enter to get into Full Screen mode.
Float all your "helper" windows and use Ctrl+Tab to get to them. (Click using mouse)
Pin your Windows Task Bar to the left or right of your screen to give more vertical reading space.
What I do is unpin all the various tool windows and views. Unpin the Solution Explorer, Properties viewer, Output etc. and the Toolbar. This leaves you with just the coding window and small bars around that allow you to hover over the edges of the window and see everything you just unpinned.
set the Solution explorer on the right to Auto-Hide, close the error window when possible (as in when you're not fixing errors), and try and drop the number of toolbars vertically to 1. You can also change the size of the text down by going to Tools > Options > Environment > Fonts and colors but i wouldn't shrink the text unless you have good vision. I recommend Consolas 12 Point for your code; it's a bit big but very nice looking!
I got rid of the toolbars altogether and made things like the Solution Explorer autohide. I came to the realisation that the only toolbar button I ever used was a custom tool one I'd put there (I use the menu for that now). I'm running at 1920x1200 so real estate wasnt an issue - I just wanted less visual distractions. Just me and the code.
Related
Using Visual Studio 2019 Professional (and if relevant, editing C#). While using the IDE, the Scrollbox on the vertical scrollbar keeps changing size depending on where you are in the document. It might be smaller at the bottom and then get bigger as you scroll upwards or vice versa. This is disconcerting and makes navigation harder.
In the image below, Options > Environment > Fonts and Colors > Overview background is set to Maroon to better show the Scrollbox in case there is ambiguity. The Scrollbox is the bit between the orange lines which you can grab to scroll up and down.
In Notepad++, the Scrollbox size depends on the height of the application and the number of lines in the text file being edited. The size (correctly) changes size when you add or remove lines, but it does not change size dynamically depending on where you are in the document. This is the functionality I'm looking for.
A related Stackoverflow question suggested disabling Edit > Advanced > Word Wrap. This does not resolve the issue.
How do you turn off "dynamic Scrollbox sizing while scrolling"?
When the IDE is in Map mode, it does not appear to be possible to fix the Scrollbox height.
To resolve this issue, go to Options > Text Editor > All Languages > Scroll Bars > Behaviour, and select Use bar mode for vertical scroll bar.
In the VSCode editor when you pull the scroll bar down to the bottom of the file, all you see is a blank page, since the text has scrolled up past the top of the text editor window. This makes scrolling to the bottom difficult because you can't just pull the scroll bar quickly all the way down but have to carefully position the cursor so you can still see your code.
Very similar to How to make Visual Studio editor stop scrolling past bottom of a file?, but comments have pointed out that question/answer is for Visual Studio. This answer is for VSCode on the macOS and Windows.
The correct answer is seen here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/40588828/1189470
There is a configuration option provided in VSCode for the functionality you specified. To enable it, go to File -> Preferences -> user settings
On the right side of the editor in settings.json paste the below line at the bottom (before closing bracket), save and close.
"editor.scrollBeyondLastLine": false
This will prevent the editor from scrolling beyond the last line.
This is now exposed as a simple checkbox labeled "Editor: Scroll Beyond Last Line" in File/Apple -> Preferences.
If just for readability you would like some space at the bottom of the file - a configurable amount - try this setting as of v1.43:
editor.padding.bottom in pixels
Editor> Padding: Bottom
Controls the amount of space between the bottom edge of the editor and
the last line.
and/or
editor.padding.top // but this isn't sticky in the sense that you can scroll right past the padding top and it is gone. It doesn't stay.
I've installed the color theme customization plug-in for Visual Studio 2013, and am having difficulty identifying and changing the background and foreground colors for Intellisense areas displayed on mouse-over events.
A screen shot is below showing the two areas that I'm struggling with. The top shows the helper dialog which appears when I delete and re-add the opening parentheses next at the line showing "#Html.PropertyFor(". Either I need to adjust the foreground color for the very light grey text, or change the background to something darker than the off white.
The second picture shows a typical Intellisense box. But the contrast on that is too low, so I need to either make the foreground text lighter, or the background box lighter.
After searching in the theme editor for quite some time, I'm unable to isolate these settings. I also inspected several settings under Tools > Options > Environment > Fonts and Colors, but was unable to identify these specific foreground/background combinations in the intellisense tool tips. I need assistance fixing both of these areas. Thanks for your help.
=== Edit 12/2/2014 at 4:33 PM ===
I found part of the solution. To make the text lighter, select Tools > Options > Environment > Fonts and Colors. Then toggle the Show Settings For list to "Editor Tooltip". You can change the "Plain Text" foreground color. But the background color cannot be edited. So I changed the foreground to white. This helped with case 2 shown above.
But with case 1, where there is a highlighted line for the available method overloads, that text still has a white background. I still need a solution for that. How can I make that white background dark? Thanks.
=== Edit 7/24/2015 8:00 AM Central ===
Joe, thanks for your suggestion. Yes, I have Productivity Power Tools installed. After turning "Colorized Parameter Help" off, the hint shown in the first graphic above went completely white. Probably that's because I have the foreground color set to White (ala Tools > Options > Environment > Fonts and Colors). Here is an example.
So I turned "Colorized Parameter Help" back on, and this is what it looks like for me right now.
This is at least legible, though the colorization is gone. I still don't know how to make that white background dark in that specific dialog. Since I can at least read the text with the workaround, this is a low priority item. What I imagine is that the ability to tweak that setting just doesn't exist within the color theme customization plug-in.
Do you have the Productivity Power Tools add-in installed? If so, either remove it or set Colorized Parameter Help to off under Tools > Options > Productivity Power Tools.
Is it possible to change the width of the text editor in VS2012 - I've got a fairly wide screen and use fairly small text so I end up with a lot wasted real-estate in the middle of my screen.
I don't want to turn off word wrap - I just want the wrap to start further right on the line. If that makes sense!?
You can set this with HTML in Visual Studio 2012 but there is no global setting and it's missing in quite a few languages.
You can just put another "dummy" window next to the one you are writing in, so the actual editor window will be smaller. You can put it on the left if you want to pan the text to the right, and to the right if you want to shorten the lines.
I actually found the answer elsewhere; VS doesn't appear to provide this functionality but Resharper does. Resharper -> Options -> Code Editing -> C# -> Formatting Style -> Line Breaks and Wrapping -> Right margin (columns)
I put mine to 200 which fixed the issue
I know that this is not what you are looking for, but I believe it solves the same problem. I too have a fairly large screen and try to make use of it as optimally as possible.
I hate tabbing between code or design tabs and try to avoid that as much as possible.
VS has a feature that permits the user to create Horizontal or Vertical Tab groups and ever since I have started using it, I have found it very helpful. These options are present in the context menu by right clicking the tab or in the VS Window Menu (Menus are seen only if the tab groups feature is not active).
I have created a screenshot with Vertical Tab Groups created as shown below. In this example, I have a overview of both the designer and the code view at the same time.
We can use tab groups whenever there is a dependency such as comparing code, redesigning a module, etc. I know it takes a little time to get used to this feature but try it out and see :)
Is there any way to hack visual studio so that it displays the line numbers in smaller font size like the way Notepad++ does? I'm using Consolas at size 12 and the line numbers just look so ugly.
Thanks.
Tools > Options... > Environment Fonts and Colors > Display Items > Line Numbers
You should be able to mess with fonts and sizes there.
EDIT for the people whose hands need to be held:
Follow this click path after you open Visual Studio 2008 (most likely by double-clicking on its icon):
Tools > Options... > Environment Fonts and Colors
"Tools" is in the menu bar at the top of the screen, and is most likely the fourth option from the right. Once you click on "Tools" a menu should come down, and you should click the "Options..." option, which is the very very last one. A new window will pop up with some junk on the right and some more things to click on on the left. Those things on the left determine what options you'll be setting on the right. Click the "Environment Fonts and Colors" option, which should be the second option.
Then, make sure "Show Settings For:" is set to "Text Editor". Click on "Line Numbers" in the listbox that says "Display Items". It is located underneath the "Font (bold type indicates fixed-width fonts):" dropdown box (that textbox with the arrow on the right side that when you click it, a whole bunch of options show up). It should be the 5th option in the "Display Items" box. After you do this, you can adjust your font, font size, color, whatever your little heart desires.
Once you're done, make sure to hit the "OK" button in the lower right corner of the window where you just made all your adjustments. Your new settings should be reflected!
:\
Even though Jason is correct in his directions, he even answered your question in a round about way.
all text editor font is the same
when you have changed one of the font properties.
So in short. No you can not adjust individual fonts for items in the actual text editor, though you can adjust almost everything else through the Option dialog.
Hope this helps.