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Did you know... Why you would want to make a Tool Window Floating? - #131

Tool Windows are available in 5 different states:

Although I would say that "Dockable" actually represents two mutually-exclusive states...

  • Docked (to the side of the IDE, etc)
  • Hovering (this is my made-up term to describe a tool window that is dockable, but not docked, and not in a floating state either.  hence floaitng - if that made any sense)

Most of these are self-explanatory, especially after a little bit of trial and error, but what about that Floating state?  You can do everything with a tool window in a "dockable (and hovering)" state that you can with a floating tool window, except being able to dock. 

How is this useful?  Sometimes you just want to positing a tool window in a certain area, and unfortunately the dock targets appear.  If you set it to Floating, you will never get dock targets for this tool window, targets to dock to any other tool window, or the 9 IDE dock targets.

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Posted: Thursday, January 17, 2008 3:00 AM by saraford

Comments

MSDN Blog Postings » Did you know... Why you would want to make a Tool Window Floating? - #131 said:

PingBack from http://msdnrss.thecoderblogs.com/2008/01/17/did-you-know-why-you-would-want-to-make-a-tool-window-floating-131/

# January 17, 2008 6:58 AM

sbi said:

Dockk targets won't appear if you hold Ctrl while you drag around a dockable tool window.

BTW: What's the point in not allowing a document window all those states?

# January 17, 2008 10:20 AM

sbi said:

Dock targets won't appear if you hold Ctrl while you drag around a dockable tool window.

BTW: What's the point in not allowing a document window all those states?

# January 17, 2008 10:21 AM

MarcT said:

This tip seems like a good place to note that you can hold ctrl while dragging to keep a Dockable window from docking - it hides all dock targets (unless that's tomorrow's tip!).

# January 17, 2008 11:15 AM

jeff blankenburg said:

Sara,

it was great having dinner with you last night. I'm sure I'll be talking with you again soon.

# January 17, 2008 12:30 PM

saraford said:

Let me check the tip queue.  If i don't have a tip for "Ctrl" disables docking, i'll definitely add it!  =)

# January 17, 2008 12:48 PM

Mike Wood said:

I use Hovering tool windows because of having two monitors.  One monitor has Visual Studion maximized in it, but really only the solution explorer window is docked in it.  I then have a hovering tool window on the second monitor with most other windows I care about such as Output, Team Explorer, Pending Changes, Find Results, Error List, Task List and Breakpoints.  

I use the VS Window Manager power toy to help quickly move my hovering tool windows to hidden or docked state.

Does anyone know if VS 2008 is supported by the VS Window Manager Powertoy?

# January 17, 2008 9:49 PM

xjb said:

本篇包括tip131-tip140

http://www.watch-life.net/visual-studio/visual-studio-2008-tip-day-14.html

#131...

# December 23, 2008 9:08 PM

Секреты Visual Studio said:

Инструментальные окна поддерживают следующие режимы работы: Плавающий (Floating) Закрепляемый (Dockable)

# June 5, 2009 2:22 AM
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