第 15 页

automatically opens the menu and selects the menu item ready for editing. As you can imagine, this

is an incredibly useful way of navigating your form layouts, and it can often provide a shortcut for

locating wayward items.

fiGure 4-20

70 .

chaPter 4 The ViSuAl STudio WorkSpAce

The Document Outline window has more functionality when used in Control Outline mode than

just a simple navigation tool. Right-clicking an entry gives you a small context menu of actions that

can be performed against the selected item. The most obvious is to access the Properties window.

One tedious chore is renaming components after you’ve added them to the form. You can select each

one in turn and set its Name property in the Properties window, but using the Document Outline

window you can simply choose the Rename option in the context menu and Visual Studio will

automatically rename the component in the design code, thus updating the Name property for you

without your needing to scroll through the Properties list.

Complex form design can sometimes produce unexpected results. This often happens when a

component is placed in an incorrect or inappropriate container control. In such a case you’ll need

to move the component to the correct container. Of course, you have to locate the issue before you

even know that there is a problem.

The Document Outline window can help with both of these activities. First, using the hierarchical

view, you can easily locate each component and check its parent container elements. The example

shown in Figure 4 - 20 indicates that the TreeView control is in Panel1, which in turn is in

SplitContainer, which is itself contained in a ContentPanel object. In this way you can easily

determine when a control is incorrectly placed on the form ’s design layout.

When you need to move a component it can be quite tricky to get the layout right. In the Document

Outline window it’s easy. Simply drag and drop the control to the correct position in the hierarchy.

For example, dragging the TreeView control to Panel2 results in its sharing the Panel2 area with the

ListView control.

You also have the option to cut, copy, and paste individual elements or whole sets of containers and

their contents by using the right-click context menu. The copy-and-paste function is particularly

useful, because you can duplicate whole chunks of your form design in other locations on the form

without having to use trial and error to select the correct elements in the Design view, or resort to

duplicating them in the code-behind in the Designer.vb

file.

When you cut an item, remember to paste it immediately into the destination

location.

reorGanizinG tool windows

The Visual Studio IDE has been designed to be very customizable to enable you to position tool

windows such that you can be the most productive and can make full use of your available screen

real estate. You can dock tool windows, have them floating, or minimize them to the edge of the

IDE displaying only their tab using auto hide.

When dragging a tool window around, a series of guides are displayed to help you move the tool

window to a docked position. Drag the tool window onto a guide to dock the window. Dragging

over a part of a guide highlights the part of the IDE that the tool window would be docked to if you

were to drop it there (as shown in Figure 4-21).

summary .

71

fiGure 4-21

To float a docked tool window simply click and drag it to a new position (making sure not to drop

it on top of one of the guides that appears). Pressing the Ctrl key while moving the window will

prevent the guides from appearing and the window from snapping to them. When a tool window is

docked and part of a tab group (that is, windows that occupy the same space and can be switched

between by clicking their tabs), clicking and dragging the tab for the tool window moves just that

window, whereas clicking and dragging the title bar for the tool window moves the entire tab group.

To access a tool window that is set to auto hide, put your mouse over its tab to make it slide out. To

put a tool window into auto hide mode, click the pushpin button in the title bar for the window, and

click it again while in the auto hide mode to return it to its docked position.

After dragging a tool window out of its docked position and moving it elsewhere

(such as onto another monitor), simply double-click its title bar while holding the

Ctrl key to return it to its previously docked position.

suMMary

In this chapter you have seen a number of tool windows that can help you not only write code but

also prototype and try it out. Making effective use of these windows will dramatically reduce the

number of times you have to run your application in order to test the code you are writing. This,

in turn, will improve your overall productivity and eliminate idle time spent waiting for your

application to run.

5 5

find and replace and Help

what’s in this chaPter?

.

Using Visual Studio’s various Find and Replace tools

.

Navigating Visual Studio’s local help system

To be a productive developer, you need to be able to navigate your way around a code base and

find what you need quickly. Visual Studio 2010 provides not just one but a number of search

functions, each suited to particular searching tasks. The first part of this chapter discusses

each of these search functions and when and where to use them.

Visual Studio 2010 is an immensely complex development environment that encompasses

multiple languages based on an extensive framework of libraries and components. You will

find it almost impossible to know everything about the IDE, let alone each of the languages

or even the full extent of the .NET Framework. As both the .NET Framework and Visual

Studio evolve, it becomes increasingly difficult to stay abreast of all the changes; moreover, it

is likely that you need to know only a subset of this knowledge. Of course, you’ll periodically

need to obtain more information on a specific topic. To help you in these situations, Visual

Studio 2010 comes with comprehensive documentation in the form of the MSDN Library,

Visual Studio 2010 Edition. The second part of this chapter walks you through the methods of

researching documentation associated with developing projects in Visual Studio 2010.

quick find/rePlace

The simplest means of searching in Visual Studio 2010 is via the Quick Find dialog.

The find-and-replace functionality in Visual Studio 2010 is split into two broad tiers with a

shared dialog and similar features: Quick Find, and the associated Quick Replace, are for

searches that you need to perform quickly on the document or project currently open in the

IDE. These two tools have limited options to filter and extend the search, but as you’ll see in a

74 . chaPter 5 Find And replAce And help

moment, even those options provide a powerful search engine that goes beyond what you ’ ll fi nd

in most applications.

quick find

Quick Find is the term that Visual Studio 2010 uses to refer to the most basic search functionality.

By default, it enables you to search for a simple word or phrase within the current document, but

even Quick Find has additional options that can extend the search beyond the active module,

or even incorporate wildcards and regular expressions in the search criteria.

To start a Find action, press the standard keyboard shortcut Ctrl+F

or select Edit Find and Replace Quick Find. Visual Studio will display

the basic Find and Replace dialog, with the default Quick Find action

selected (see Figure 5 - 1).

Type the search criteria into the Find what textbox, or select from

previous searches by clicking the drop - down arrow and scrolling

through the list of criteria that have been used. By default, the scope

of the search is restricted to the current document or window you ’ re

editing, unless you have a number of lines selected, in which case

the default scope is the selection. The Look in drop - down list gives you additional options based

on the context of the search itself, including Selection, Current Block, Current Document, Current

Project, Entire Solution, and All Open Documents.

Find - and - replace actions will always wrap around the selected scope looking for the search terms,

stopping only when the fi nd process has reached the starting point again. As Visual Studio fi nds

each result, it highlights the match and scrolls the code window so you can view it. If the match is

already visible in the code window, Visual Studio does not scroll the code. Instead, it just highlights

the new match. However, if it does need to scroll the window, it attempts to position the listing

so the match is in the middle of the code editor window.

In the Standard toolbar there is a Quick Find box, as shown in Figure 5 - 2.

This box actually has multiple purposes. The keyboard shortcut Ctrl+/

will place focus on the box. You can then enter a search phrase and press

Enter to fi nd the next match in the currently open fi le. If you prefi x what

fiGure 5 - 1

fiGure 5 - 2

This search tool is best suited for when you need to do a simple text - based

search/replace (as opposed to searching for a symbol).

Once you have performed the fi rst Quick Find search, you no longer need the

dialog to be visible. You can simply press F3 to repeat the same search.

Quick find/replace .

75

you type with >, Visual Studio 2010 attempts to execute the command as if it had been entered into

the Command window (see Chapter 4 for more information).

quick replace

Performing a Quick Replace is similar to performing a Quick Find.

You can switch between Quick Find and Quick Replace by clicking

their respective buttons at the top of the dialog window. If you want

to go directly to Quick Replace, you can do so with the keyboard

shortcut Ctrl+H or the menu command Edit Find and Replace Quick

Replace. The Quick Replace options (see Figure 5-3) are the same

as those for Quick Find, but with an additional field where you can

specify what text should be used in the replacement.

The Replace With field works in the same way as Find What — you

can either type a new replacement string or, with the drop-down list

provided, choose any you’ve previously entered.

fiGure 5-3

A simple way to delete recurring values is to use the replace functionality with

nothing specified in the Replace With text area. This enables you to find all

occurrences of the search text and decide if it should be deleted.

find options

Sometimes you will want to filter the search results in different ways,

and that’s where the find options come into play. First, to display the

options section (available in all find-and-replace actions), click the

expand icon next to Find Options. The dialog will expand to show

a set of checkbox options and drop-down lists from which you can

choose, as shown in Figure 5-4.

These options enable you to refine the search to be case-sensitive

(Match Case) or an exact match (Match Whole Word). You can also

change the direction of the search (Search Up), and specify that you

are performing a more advanced search that is using wildcards or

regular expressions.

wildcards

Wildcards are simple text symbols that represent one or more characters, and are familiar to

many users of Windows applications. Figure 5-5 illustrates the Expression Builder when the

wildcard option is specified under the Use drop-down. Although additional characters can be

fiGure 5-4

76 .

chaPter 5 Find And replAce And help

used in a wildcard search, the most common

characters are ? for a single character and *

for multiple characters that are unknown or

variable in the search.

regular expressions

Regular expressions take searching to a whole

new level, with the capability to do complex text

matching based on the full RegEx engine built

into Visual Studio 2010. Although this book

doesn’t go into great detail on the advanced

matching capabilities of regular expressions, it’s

worth mentioning the additional help provided

by the Find and Replace dialog if you choose to

use them in your search terms.

Figure 5-6 again shows the Expression Builder,

this time for building a regular expression as

specified in the Use drop-down. From here you

can easily build your regular expressions with a

menu showing the most commonly used regular

expression phrases and symbols, along with

English descriptions of each.

An example of where using regular expressions

might come in handy is when reversing

assignments. For example, if you have

this code:

Vb

Description = product.Description

Quantity = product.Quantity

SellPrice = product.SellPrice

c#

Description = product.Description;

Quantity = product.Quantity;

SellPrice = product.SellPrice;

and want to reverse the assignments like so:

Vb

product.Description = Description

product.Quantity = Quantity

product.SellPrice = SellPrice

fiGure 5-5

fiGure 5-6

Quick find/replace .

77

c#

product.Description = Description;

product.Quantity = Quantity;

product.SellPrice = SellPrice;

this would be a perfect use for performing a Quick Replace with regular expressions rather than

modifying each line of code manually. Ensure you select regular expressions in the find options, and

enter the following as the “text” to find:

Vb

{ < .*} = {.*}

c#

{ < .*} = {.*};

and the following as the replace with “text”:

Vb

\2 = \1

c#

\2 = \1;

As a brief explanation, you are searching for two groups (defined by the curly brackets) separated

by an equals sign. The first group is searching for the first character of a word (<) and then any

characters (.*). The second group is searching for any characters until an end-of-line character is

found in the VB example or a semicolon is found in the C# example. Then when you do the replace,

you are simply inserting the characters from the second group found in its place, an equals sign