Sara Ford's Weblog

This tip will work for both Visual Studio .NET 2003 and Visual Studio 2005. I use this feature all the time. These commands will comment / uncomment the current line if there is no selection. Based on the feedback and comments, it seems that people like...

Giving a presentation? Want to focus just on the editor (and any interesting tools windows) without modifying your basic (design) view of Visual Studio? Press Shift+Alt+Enter (or View – Full Screen) to enter full screen mode. Whatever happens in Full...

Today’s tip of the day comes from Shawn’s post on the Find Combo Box . These tips will work on both Visual Studio .NET 2003 and Visual Studio 2005. Goto a line – type the line number and press Ctrl-G Goto a file – type the name of the file and press Ctrl...

I’ve been thinking about doing an Editor tip of the day RSS feed for a while now. My goal is to see how many consecutive work days I can post a “Did you know” without forgetting. The rules are I have to post at least one tip per work day, unless I know...

Another simple little feature, but very powerful, especially when you deal with white space as much as I do. The first time I saw a developer using it, it thought, “Yuck”, but now I’m addicted, even when I’m not testing white space in a file. To enable...

both Visual Studio .NET 2003 and Visual Studio 2005, you can enable either Word Wrap or Virtual Space. To use… Open Tools – Options Open the Text Editor – All Languages – General page (or the specific language page of your choice) Check either Word Wrap...

In both Visual Studio .NET 2003 and Visual Studio 2005, you can navigate to the find combo box (aka the Ctrl+D Window) on the standard toolbar and run commands. To use Press Ctrl+D anywhere in Visual Studio. Note: The command to reach the find combo box...

In both Visual Studio .NET 2003 and Visual Studio 2005, there’s an Open With associated with the Open File Dialog. I probably had used this dialog a thousands times and never once noticed the Open button was actually one of those button / combo box hybrids...

I didn’t know about incremental searching until someone showed me. This is a really powerful searching tool for the current document. To use 1. Press Ctrl+I (or whatever Edit.IncrementalSearch is bound to) 2. Start typing the text you’re searching for...

Just completed a Find in Files or a Find Symbol and want to navigate quickly between the results? In the default keyboard scheme, F8 allows you to navigate through the results in the Find Results Windows, Find Symbol Results, Output Window, Task List...

To split the current window, just go to Window – Split from the main menu (or use the splitter control between the file tab channel and the scroll bar for the doc). To create new windows for the same document, just go to Window – New Window and create...

You can quickly change the editor background to black by going to Tools Options Environment Fonts & Colors. Make sure that “Show Settings For” is on Text Editor and the Plain Text is selected in “Display Items”. Change item foreground from Default...

As a follow up to yesterday’s post, the point of the Ctrl+D window is to do a quick find in the current document. If you want to customize your quick find experience, just do Ctrl+F (Edit – Find and Replace – Quick Find) and any changes made in the Quick...

Finally, the promised post. Types of Controls There are three types of controls you’ll discover when automating UI Standard Windows controls Owner-drawn controls – controls that have the functionality of Standard Windows controls, but have custom drawing...

Last Friday, I turned 27, so I decided to enter my late-twenties the only way I knew how… by climbing Tiger Mountain – West Tiger 3. My favorite picture of Graham at the top of Tiger Mountain. Graham as the mighty Sheltie that he is. And lastly a classic...