Nadav and the wonders of the web

Lately I stumbled upon a few cool things you can change in the Visual Studio 2005 to get some nice to have features.

Here they are:

1. Change the start-up behavior:
   If you’re like me and you don’t like the fact that it takes a while for VS to load, partially because of the start-up screen, while you don’t use it anyway… then this for you !
   Go to: Tools->Options->Environment->Startup
   And choose whatever fits you best.
2. Enable line numbering:
   Some times when you use a log file or you look in the windows event handler you will see certain errors you want to check in the code, but while looking for the right line you keep looking at the status bar to see in which line you are. NO MORE!
   Go to: Tools->Options->Text Editor->[Choose your language or All Languages]->General
   And set the check box at the bottom named “Line numbers”.
3. You might want to go through the “Formatting” section and set it up to your liking.
4. If you don’t like it that when you implement an Interface VS automatically wraps it with a #region than you can go to the same place but look at [Language]->Advanced
   And unset the check box at the bottom under “Implement Interface”
5. If like me you don’t use the WYSIWYG editor for HTML than you might want to go to:
   Tools->Options->HTML Designer
   And choose “Source View” at the top.
6. A cool and not so known feature of VS is that you can set special keywords to show up on the Task List.
   First, what you want to do is open the Task List window, you do this by View->Task List(or just Ctrl+T).
   Second, go to Tools->Options->Environment->Task List. Here you can set up your own keywords or removed ones you don’t like. this can be used so when you need to do a little fix in your code at a latter time you put a little “//TODO: ….” comment there, then, when you look at the Task List not only you will see all the TODO’s[and other keywords] comments but a double click on it will bring you to the exact line. Now that’s a time saver! no more searching the entire solution for those TODO comments.
7. Another very cool and probably not very known feature of VS is that you can Import and Export your settings! this means that after you go through all the settings and set everything to your liking you can save it so the next time you install VS you will easily set it up in no time.

Hope you found this informative and that it helped you a little.

Until next time, have a good one =].

Nadav