[Update: this feature was cut in the final version of Visual Studio. It's a great idea we may revisit in the future, but our implementation for VS2005 was bad. It caused hangs for some of our users and very confusing error messages for many others.]

Visual Studio 2005 includes a toolwindow (Debug->Windows->Console Window) which allows you to see the output of your console application within the IDE. It also allows you to type into it like a normal console window. It is at various states of completion in the Beta and May CTP, but the plan is for it to show up when the first data is sent to the console and stay visible after returning to Design mode. That way it will allow analysis of the output after your program has run to completion.

There are some limitations to it, however. It's a very lightweight window, and will cause exceptions to be thrown when calling most of System.Console's methods. You will get an InvalidOperationException or IOException with the message ”The handle is invalid.” If you need to use these methods and properties, go to Tools->Options->Debugging->General and uncheck “Use Console Window.”

We are planning on shipping the window even though it causes these errors - we think there is some value in being able to see your program's output within the IDE, even if you have to go outside Visual Studio to get your different colors, etc.. Because of all this we're thinking of renaming it to Quick Console.

What do you think? Send me any and all feedback you have on the Console toolwindow!