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every aspect of how the code editor reformats code, as you can see from the

additional nodes for C# in Figure 4 - 4 .

You may have noticed the Tabify/Untabify Selected Lines commands under

the Edit . Advanced menu and wondered how these differ from the Format

Selection command. These commands simply convert leading spaces in lines

to tabs and vice versa, rather than recalculating the indenting as the Format

Selection command does.

The Code editor .

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navigating forward/backward

As you move within and between items, Visual Studio 2010 tracks where you have been, in much

the same way that a web browser tracks the sites you have visited. Using the Navigate Forward

and Navigate Backward items from the View menu, you can easily go back and forth between the

various locations in the project that you have made changes to. The keyboard shortcut to navigate

backward is Ctrl+–. To navigate forward again it is Ctrl+Shift+–.

additional code editor features

The Visual Studio code editor is very rich with far more features than we can cover in depth here.

However, here are a few additional features that you may find useful.

reference Highlighting

A new feature in Visual Studio 2010 is reference highlighting.

All uses of the symbol (such as a method or property) under the

cursor within its scope are highlighted (as shown in Figure 4-5).

This makes it easy to spot where else this symbol is used within

your code. You can easily navigate between the uses by

Ctrl+Shift+Up/Down.

fiGure 4-5

Code Zooming

You can use Ctrl+Mouse Wheel to zoom in and out of your code (effectively making the text

larger or smaller). This feature can be especially useful when presenting to a group to enable the

people at the back of the audience to see the code being demonstrated. The bottom left-hand

corner of the code editor also has a drop-down enabling you to select from some predefined

zoom levels.

Word Wrap

You can turn on word wrap in the code editor from the options. Go to Tools . Options, expand the

Text Editor node, select the All Languages subnode, and select the Word Wrap option. You can also

choose to display a return arrow glyph where text has been wrapped by selecting the Show Visual

Glyphs for Word Wrap option below the Word Wrap option.

You can turn this on for the current project by selecting Edit .

Advanced . Word Wrap.

line numbers

To keep track of where you are in a code file you may find it

useful to turn on line numbers in the code editor (as shown in

Figure 4-6). To turn line numbers on, go to Tools . Options,

expand the Text Editor node, select the All Languages subnode,

and select the Line Numbers option.

fiGure 4-6

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split View

Sometimes you want to view two different parts of

the same code file at the same time. Split view enables

you to do this by splitting the active code editor

window into two horizontal panes separated by a

splitter bar. These can then be scrolled separately to

display different parts of the same file simultaneously

(as shown in Figure 4-7).

To split a code editor window, select Split from the

Window menu. Alternatively, drag the handle directly

above the vertical scroll bar down to position the

splitter bar.

Drag the splitter bar up and down to adjust the size

of each pane. To remove the splitter simply double-

click the splitter bar, or select Remove Split from the Window menu.

tear away (floating) code windows

A welcome new feature in Visual Studio 2010 for those with multiple monitors is the ability to

“tear off” or float code editor windows (and tool windows) and move them outside the main Visual

Studio IDE window (as shown in Figure 4-8), including onto another monitor. This allows you to

now make use of the extra screen real-estate that having multiple monitors provides by enabling

multiple code editor windows to be visible at the same time over separate monitors. To tear off a

window, make sure it has the focus and then select Float from the Window menu. Alternatively,

right-click the title bar of the window and select Float from the drop-down menu, or simply click

and drag the tab for that window (effectively tearing it away from its docked position) and position

it where you want it to be located.

fiGure 4-7

fiGure 4-8

The Code editor .

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You may find halving the code editor window in split view (discussed in the previous section) in order

to view different parts of a file at the same time too much of a limited view, so you might want to

use the floating code windows feature instead to open another code editor window for the same file,

and place it, say, on a different screen (if you have a multiple monitor setup). The trick to doing this

(because double-clicking the file again in the Solution Explorer simply activates the existing code editor

window instance for that file) is to select New Window from the Window menu. This will open the file

currently being viewed in another window which you can then tear away and position as you please.

creating tab Groups

If you don’t have the privilege of having more than one monitor, it is still possible to view more than

one code editor window at the same time. You do this by creating tab groups, and tiling these groups

to display at the same time. As their name would indicate, a tab group is a group of code editor

window tabs, with each tab group appearing in a separate tile. Multiple tab groups can be created,

limited only by the amount of screen real-estate they will occupy. You can choose to tile the tab

groups vertically or horizontally, although you cannot use a mix of the two.

To start this process you need to have more than one

tab open in the code editor window. Ensure a code

editor tab has the focus, then select Window . New

Horizontal Tab Group or Window . New Vertical

Tab Group from the menu displayed. This starts a

new tab group and creates a tile for it (as shown in

Figure 4-9).

Alternatively, you can simply drag a tab below or

beside an existing one and dock it to achieve the

same effect.

You can drag tabs between tab groups or move

them between tab groups using Window .

Move to

Next Tab Group and Window . Move to Previous

Tab Group. These options are also available from

the drop-down menu when right-clicking a tab.

To restore the user interface to having a single tab group again, move the tabs from the new tab

group(s) back into the original one again and the tiling will be removed.

advanced functionality

To be a truly productive developer it can help to know various advanced features available in the

code editor that are hidden away but can save you a lot of time. Here are some of the most useful

commands that aren’t immediately obvious within the code editor.

Commenting/Uncommenting a Code Block

Often you need to comment or uncomment a block of code, and you don’t want to have to add/

remove the comment characters to/from the start of each line, especially when there are many lines

in the block. Of course, in C# you could wrap the block of code between a /* and */ to comment it

fiGure 4-9

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out, but this type of comment isn’t available in Visual Basic, and it can be problematic in C# when

commenting out a block that already contains a comment using this style.

Visual Studio provides a means to comment/uncomment a block of code easily, by selecting the

block, then selecting Edit . Advanced . Comment Selection to comment it out, or selecting Edit .

Advanced . Uncomment Selection to uncomment it.

The easiest way to access these commands (you are likely to use these often) is via their shortcuts.

Press Ctrl+K, Ctrl+C to comment a block of code, and Ctrl+K, Ctrl+U to uncomment it. The Text

Editor toolbar is another simple means to access these commands.

Block selection

Also known as box selection, column selection, rectangle selection,

or vertical text selection, block selection is the ability to select text

in a block (as shown in Figure 4-10) instead of the normal behavior

of selecting lines of text (stream selection). To select a block of text,

fiGure 4-10

hold down the Alt key while selecting text with the mouse, or use

Shift+Alt+Arrow with the keyboard. This feature can come in handy when, for example, you have

code lined up and want to remove a vertical portion of that code (such as a prefix on variable

declarations).

Multiline editing

Multiline editing is a new feature available in Visual Studio 2010 that extends the abilities of block

selection. In previous versions, after selecting a vertical block of text you could only delete, cut, or

copy the block. With Visual Studio 2010 you can now type after selecting a vertical block of text,

which will replace the selected text with what’s being typed on each line. This can be handy for

changing a group of variables from private to protected, for example.

You can also insert text across multiple lines by creating a block with zero width

and simply starting to type.

The Clipboard ring

Visual Studio keeps track of the last 20 snippets of text that have been copied or cut to the

clipboard. To paste text that was previously copied to the clipboard but overwritten, instead of the

normal Ctrl+V when pasting, use Ctrl+Shift+V. Pressing V while holding down Ctrl+Shift cycles

through the entries.

full-screen View

You can maximize the view for editing the code by selecting View . Full Screen, or using the

Shift+Alt+Enter shortcut. This effectively maximizes the code editor window, hiding the other tool

windows and the toolbars. To return to the normal view, press Shift+Alt+Enter again or click the

Full-Screen toggle button that has been added to the end of the menubar.

The Command Window .

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Go To Definition

To quickly navigate to the definition of the class, method, or member under the cursor, right-click .

Go To Definition, or simply press F12.

find all references

You can find where a method or property is called by right-clicking its definition and selecting

Find All References from the drop-down menu, or placing the cursor in the method definition and

pressing Shift+F12. This activates the Find Symbol Results tool window and displays the locations

throughout your solution where that method or property is referenced. You can then double-click a

reference in the results window to navigate to that result in the code editor window.

This feature has somewhat been made obsolete by the new Call Hierarchy

window, discussed later in this chapter. However, it can still be a quick way to

view where a method is used without navigating through the Call Hierarchy

window.

the coMMand window

As you become more familiar with Visual Studio 2010, you will spend less time looking for

functionality and more time using keyboard shortcuts to navigate and perform actions within the

IDE. One of the tool windows that ’s often overlooked is the Command window, accessible via

View .

Other Windows .

Command Window

(Ctrl+Alt+A). From this window you can

execute any existing Visual Studio command

or macro, as well as any additional macros

you may have recorded or written. Figure 4-11

illustrates the use of IntelliSense to show the

list of commands that can be executed from

the Command window. This list will include all

macros defined within the current solution.

A full list of the Visual Studio commands is available via the Environment . Keyboard node of the

Options dialog (Tools . Options). The commands all have a similar syntax based on the area of the

IDE that they are derived from. For example, you can open the debugging output window (Debug .

Windows . Output) by typing Debug.Output into the Command window.

The commands fall into three rough groups. Many commands are shortcuts to either tool windows

(which are made visible if they aren ’t already open) or dialogs. For example, File.NewFile opens

the new fi le dialog. Other commands query information about the current solution or the debugger.

Using Debug.ListThreads lists the current threads, in contrast to Debug.Threads, which opens

the Threads tool window. The third type includes those commands that perform an action without

fiGure 4-11

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displaying a dialog. This would include most macros and a number of commands that accept

arguments (a full list of these, including the arguments they accept, is available within the MSDN

documentation). There is some overlap between these groups: for example, the Edit.Find command

can be executed with or without arguments. If this command is executed without arguments, the

Find and Replace dialog is displayed. Alternatively, the following command will find all instances of

the string MyVariable in the current document (/d) and place a marker in the code window border

against the relevant lines (/m):

>Edit.Find MyVariable /m /d

Although there is IntelliSense within the Command window, you may find typing a frequently

used command somewhat painful. Visual Studio 2010 has the ability to assign an alias to a particular

command. For example, the alias command can be used to assign an alias, e?, to the find command

used previously:

>alias e? Edit.Find MyVariable /m /d

With this alias defined you can easily perform this command from anywhere within the IDE:

press Ctrl+Alt+A to give the Command Window focus, then type e? to perform the find-and-mark

command.

You will have imported a number of default aliases belonging to the environment settings when

you began working with Visual Studio 2010. You can list these using the alias command with

no arguments. Alternatively, if you want to find out what command a specific alias references, you

can execute the command with the name of the alias. For example, querying the previously defined

alias, e?, would look like the following:

>alias e?

alias e? Edit.Find SumVals /m /doc