Spotlight: Visual Studio 2010 IDE

By chriseargle May 24, 2010, 1:41 AM PDT

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Fly-out windows in Visual Studio 2010

Visual Studio 2010 treats developers and other users to a user interface overhaul laden with new features to improve the development experience. For instance, the user interface is built on WPF and no longer relies on the limited MDI interface in previous versions; this allows for better multi-monitor support with fly-out windows.

For more details, read my Product Spotlight about the Visual Studio 2010 IDE.

Visual Studio 2010 Start page

The first thing you might notice when opening Visual Studio 2010 is the new Start page. As an xaml file, this page is completely customizable and includes the ability to remove and pin project files in the Recent Projects section.

For more details, read my Product Spotlight about the Visual Studio 2010 IDE.

Scaled font in Visual Studio 2010

The code editor has a number of enhancements. You can scale the font by holding down [Ctrl] while scrolling the mouse wheel. In previous versions of Visual Studio, users had to set the font size through a dialog and exit to see if the changes were correct.

For more details, read my Product Spotlight about the Visual Studio 2010 IDE.

Box Selection in Visual Studio 2010

Box Selection was present in Visual Studio 2008 by holding down [Alt] while selecting text. In Visual Studio 2010, Box Selection is enhanced to allow for zero-length boxes and improved pasting.

For more details, read my Product Spotlight about the Visual Studio 2010 IDE.

Highlight References in Visual Studio 2010

The feature that will see the most use (by accident if not design) is Highlight References. By selecting any symbol, such as a variable or a property, all references to the symbol are highlighted. The symbols can then be navigated by holding down [Ctrl][Shift] and pressing the up/down keys.

For more details, read my Product Spotlight about the Visual Studio 2010 IDE.

IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2010

IntelliSense has been improved to allow for acronyms based on Pascal casing. For example, typing String.INOE and then a non-alphanumeric character will convert the call to String.IsNullOrEmpty. This still doesn’t prevent IntelliSense from interfering when you’re writing code that doesn’t exist, as you would with a unit test.

For more details, read my Product Spotlight about the Visual Studio 2010 IDE.

Suggestion Completion mode in Visual Studio 2010

The Suggestion Completion mode allows you to type freely without IntelliSense changing the text you typed. You can toggle between Standard and Suggestion Completion modes by pressing [Ctrl][Alt]space. IntelliSense for JavaScript has seen the most improvement, as it is now able to determine the correct structure of a variable even after the structure is changed.

For more details, read my Product Spotlight about the Visual Studio 2010 IDE.

Call Hierarchy in Visual Studio 2010

In the past, I would use .NET Reflector or another tool to analyze a user’s call hierarchy; now that functionality is built-in. Right-click the user and choose View Call Hierarchy, and calls to and from the user will be available for browsing.

For more details, read my Product Spotlight about the Visual Studio 2010 IDE.

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