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.
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
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.
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:
Does anyone know of a Visual Studio plugin for viewing PowerPoint slide shows in a pane in Visual Studio? I've been working through a tutorial and I'm annoyed with alt-tabbing between the two applications (I prefer giving Visual Studio the full screen).
Clarification:
I do have dual screens at work, and a 30" display at home, but in my doubtless fussy opinion, opening and arranging multiple windows is much less convenient then having the info in a pane in the IDE for this particular task. There is also the matter being able to cut and paste code from the tutorial into the edit window without having to alt-tab. I'd like something like the internal web browser pane, or in-place help panes in Eclipse.
I very much doubt there would be a VS plug-in for displaying PowerPoint slide shows. I can't imagine very many cases where this would be useful. I never use PowerPoint when doing development work.
Perhaps the only situation where it might be useful is in training, as you've described. But honestly, my recommendation would be to add a second monitor to your computer. Then you can keep Visual Studio maximized on your primary screen, while displaying the PowerPoint slides on the secondary monitor.
I suspect that you'll find a dual-screen setup will not only be useful while you're learning Visual Studio, but continue to pay dividends as you begin working in Visual Studio, as well. The productivity boost of multiple screens is well documented around the web, and my own experience is that I can hardly work without a minimum of 2 screens anymore.
This is really a no-brainer for any developer who values his or her time. Now more than ever, since:
Most mainstream, inexpensive video cards tend to come with two VGA ports (aka "dual head") standard.
The price of less bulky 17" and 19" LCDs are quite reasonable.
Windows XP has mature multiple monitor support; it's been a standard out of box win32 feature since Windows 98.
The multiple monitor support is very good in both Windows XP and Windows 7 (I experienced some minor irritations under Windows Vista, but not nearly enough to be discouraging). And you don't have to buy a giant secondary screen (or even primary screen). Two 17" or 19" monitors will generally be more productive than one large 22" or 24" screen.
In other words, if I want to write a winforms db application with an appearince like VS that has docked panels and also the ability to show/hide forms within some of those panels, how would I structure the interface? How would I have the ability to open several disparate forms at different times (with big data grids on them) while avoiding floating forms and also using memory efficiently? I want to avoid floating windows.
Check out this article to build a VS like interface:
Visual Studio IDE like Dock Container
I haven't tried the component myself but it looks interesting.
Visual Studio is definetly MDI
In the technical sense, Visual Studio is an MDI application whose document windows are anchored by tab navigation.
MDI refers to "multiple document interface," and refers to the fact that there are multiple documents open and visible inside a larger parent window.
In the modern application development realm, typically MDI has been frowned upon -- but that was the "old school" MDI, with the free-floating windows. Those are widely considered to be a usability nightmare.
On the other hand, MDI implemented as tabs inside a parent window is so successful from a UI consideration that even environment which didn't traditionally have MDI (EG, Mac OS) are implementing them.
In order to implement something like this, you can "roll your own," or you can use any of a variety of custom control/API packages which will allow you to easily develop tabbed-interface MDI apps. One of the last things I did with Infragistics NetAdvantage (before moving away from it) was a Visual Studio-inspired app, with docking sidebars, search results as a pane at the bottom, and all the primary data forms as tabbed MDI documents. (Indeed, WinForms is one of the few places Infragistics really shines.)
In terms of memory management, that will be on you. :)
I think technically Visual Studio would be classed as an MDI.
The main form holds disparate controls. Each of these controls can then be docked as required etc. Visual Studio for example has a single control (with multiple tabs) to display the documents you edit. A single control with multiple tabs that holds (eg) Solution Explorer, Properties etc etc.
As a starting point to creating your own IDE style interface I would create a form with 5 panels, one docked to top, one to left, one to right, one bottom and one 'fill'
Thats your starting point. Add splitter bars to allow the panels to be resized. Each panel can then hold a Tab control, and each tab holds a 'MdiBaseControl'
An MdiBaseControl can be whatever you want. So in VS terms you have things like SolutionExplorer, Properties, Breakpoints, FindResults etc etc.
Each MdiBaseControl can be dragged from its current tab and dropped into any of the docked panels (which then adds it to the Tab control as a new tab)
I just noticed that Developer Express have some controls for building IDE-style interfaces.
In both interfaces, multiple forms can be seen at the same time but in MDI, things float freely. In this sense, Visual Studio is a SDI.