Visual Studio Editor Blog : WPF

Where did the Editor team go?

VSEditor — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 05:53:00 GMT

You may have noticed that we haven’t been blogging quite as often lately, which begs the question, “What has the Editor team been doing since Beta1?” The answer: a lot! We’ve been focusing on a few specific goals since Beta1, and this post should give you a better idea not only of what we’re working on but also what you can expect in Beta2.

Major Performance Improvements

As many of you have noticed, Beta1 performance is not at the level that you and we expect for an RTM product. Many tasks take too long and use too much memory. We knew that when Beta1 shipped, and we’ve made performance a major priority for Beta2.

As VS General Manager Jason Zander and VS Platform Architect Rico Mariani have said on their blogs, the Visual Studio team tracks the performance of a wide variety of scenarios. These include specific tasks like scrolling in the editor as well as bigger-picture end-to-end scenarios that involve a series of tasks spanning the entire edit-compile-debug cycle. The VS Platform team alone, including Editor, owns and tracks more than 20 critical scenarios. We’ve made huge perf and memory usage improvements since Beta1, and in many cases VS 2010 Beta2 performance will be even better than VS 2008!

In addition to working on performance in general, we made a specific effort to improve Visual Studio’s performance over remote desktop. We know this is an important use case for many of you and that Beta1 is particularly slow over RD connections. The VS Platform and WPF teams invested heavily in improving the remote experience for Beta2, especially scrolling and IntelliSense, and the difference is noticeable not only in automated performance testing but more importantly in day-to-day usage. We sought out internal users of VS 2010 who connect to machines in Redmond but are based as far away as Australia, and they have noticed major increases in Visual Studio 2010’s performance that translate into increases in their productivity. Whether you’re remoting into VS running on a virtual machine, a physical machine down the hall, or a machine thousands of miles away, you’ll see a greatly improved experience for Beta2.

Many Bug Fixes

Thank you to everyone who filed a Connect bug, posted in a feedback forum, or sent us an e-mail to report issues in Beta1; it really does make a difference. A few posts ago, we gave a status update on some of the most commonly-encountered Beta1 bugs. I’m happy to report that all of those bugs – and many more that were less commonly reported – are now fixed for Beta2!

In addition to user-reported issues, we’ve fixed a variety of internally-reported bugs and invested in fine-tuning the product to make Beta2 feel more polished. Many people within Microsoft, both in Visual Studio and working on completely different products, are using VS 2010 as their production environment, which helps us find and fix bugs that users are likely to encounter in day-to-day development. As we move closer to a finalized product, the Editor team has also been working on “fit and finish” issues that range from refining extensibility points to doing pixel cleanup on UI components. Both quantitatively and qualitatively, Beta2 is shaping up to be a stable, high-quality release of VS 2010.

The Return of your Favorite Features

We focused more heavily on improving performance and fixing bugs than on adding features for Beta2, but you’ll still see some new and exciting additions. In Beta2 you’ll see the return of two of your favorite VS 2008 features: box selection and the clipboard ring. C++ users will also notice the return of drag & drop editing, which is present for managed but not native languages in Beta1. The new-for-VS 2010 zoom feature you saw in the CTP and in Beta1 has been improved too: not only does it provide an easy way to return to 100% zoom and not zoom scrollbars, but it also includes new UI to make zooming even easier. Most of the Editor features you’ll see in VS 2010 were already present in Beta1, but there were a few that you told us you couldn’t live without; again, your feedback truly does make a difference.

VS 2010 Beta2 sounds great. When can I get it?

More and more of you are asking when Beta2 will be released. The release date hasn’t been announced, so we can’t say just yet. But we certainly will post here when the date is public and again when Beta2 becomes available.

In the meantime, please do continue to use Beta1 and send us feedback through Connect bugs, forum posts, e-mail to the Editor team, and now Twitter. Your input has helped us make huge improvements in VS 2010 since Beta1, and I hope you’ll continue to let us know what you think all the way through RTM.

Brittany Behrens
Program Manager, VS Platform Team

Code Samples, Documentation, and… Twitter!

VSEditor — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 03:40:00 GMT

Samples

In an effort to help more people get started with Editor extensibility quickly and easily, we’ve recently posted some new code samples on the VS 2010 Editor. Each of the links below will take you to a sample, complete with description, instructions, and a download of all the code you need.

ToDo Glyphs: Adds a visual glyph for ToDo items in a file
Hyperlink: Enables Ctrl+click navigation to hyperlinks
Diff Classifier: Provides syntax highlighting for diff/patch files
Highlight Word: Uses tagging and adornments to highlight all occurrences of the word under the caret
Caret Fish Eye: Transforms the text in the editor so it appears larger around your caret and smaller elsewhere

There’s also source code available for the RegEx Editor, Demo Dashboard, IntelliSense Presenter, and Image Insertion extensions, as seen on the Visual Studio Gallery and in the Extension Manager, so you can see how we implemented them :-) You can find all of these and a variety of samples from other teams at the VSX sample homepage – check back periodically because we’ll continue to add new content from now to the final release of VS 2010.

Documentation

We’ve also heard some feedback that you want more documentation, so here it is: Beta1 Editor documentation. You’ll find walkthroughs on extensibility, help with MEF, a list of extension points, and more. It’s a great place to get started.

Twitter

You can always get in touch with the Editor team by commenting on this blog, posting in our Beta1 feedback forums, or e-mailing us directly. Now there’s one more way to get Editor news and keep in touch with the Editor team: follow @vseditor on Twitter! We’re new to Twitter but are already tweeting about new samples, documentation, news, and all things Editor, so check us out!

Brittany Behrens
Program Manager, VS Platform Team

Walkthrough: Getting Started with Editor Extensions

VSEditor — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:11:00 GMT

In an attempt to bring extension building to the masses, the editor team submitted a hands on lab for TechEd this year that walks you through creating a real-world extension. While one of the goals of the lab is to show you how to build extensions in general, the hope was to also disseminate some of the methodologies and concepts behind our new extensibility story.

Everyone has certainly seen the obligatory “Hello World” code for any new thing they try. I wanted the lab to be much more meaningful than that though, and instead provide you with a scenario that might be something you actually want to do. In this case, what you’re building is an extension that allows you to place walkthrough content directly inside of the editor in little chat-like bubbles.

All of the walkthrough steps you see here are actually parsed from an XML file, which means that this extension adds meta content to the editor window without any modification of the code file it is displaying. Moreover, there is also another kind of visual created here; a little block around the word “System,” which when hovered over will then display a tooltip with extra information. These two visuals are called “Adornments” in the editor world, and are nothing more than Windows Presentation Framework (WPF) elements associated to a grouping of text. Last but not least, the green bar across the top of the image above (that has a label with “Position:” on it) is called a margin. This is another WPF element, but this time it is snapped to the outside edge of the editor’s window.

So if you didn’t get a chance to make it to TechEd 2009, but would like to try out the lab, you’re in luck. It takes about an hour to complete (yes, you will be able to get all of that functionality done in an hour) and it takes the time to explain a bit about what you’re doing and why. I hope you find it useful, and look forward to the extensions you guys create!

Download Lab Files

Cheers,

Chris Granger
Program Manager | Visual Studio Platform

Common Editor Issues in VS 2010 Beta1

VSEditor — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:29:00 GMT

Thank you to everyone who has downloaded and tried VS 2010 Beta1 so far! In the two weeks since Beta1 was released, you’ve sent us tons of feedback that has helped us fix some of the most commonly reported bugs. This post details frequently-encountered bugs and their status, in no particular order:

Background Color of the Editor is always white

Status: Patch available for download here
The Bug: Setting a custom background color for the editor works once, but every new editor window opens with a white background. This can be fixed by going to Tools->Options->Environment->Fonts and Colors and simply clicking OK, but it’s annoying to have to do that every time you open a new tab or restart VS.
The Solution: This should be fixed for the next release of VS 2010. For Beta1, there is an extension written by a member of the VS Editor team as a patch that will allow custom background colors to persist. You can find it in VS by going to Tools->Extension Manager and searching for the "BackgroundPatchExtension," or download it from a web browser here. Once you install it, just make sure it is enabled in the Extension Manager, and your background color should be applied correctly.

Outlining Highlight Color flickers or makes text unreadable on dark backgrounds

Status: Fix in progress
The Bug: The highlight color when you mouse over an outlining region is not currently configurable, and the default color makes text difficult to read on dark backgrounds. Some users also notice that the highlight causes a flicker effect when moving the mouse from the editor to the toolbox, line number margin, breakpoint margin, or other margins on the left.
The Solution: We plan to choose a better default color that should make the highlight better for dark backgrounds. We also plan to make the highlight color configurable, so you can choose a custom color that works with your preferred color scheme. This also gives the ability to avoid the flicker by setting the highlight color equal to your editor background color. You should see these changes in the next release of VS 2010.

Some Fonts do not work, and Text in the Editor may appear blurry

Status: Fix in progress
The Bug: Some fonts, custom and available in Tools->Options, will display as Consolas instead of the desired font. Text in the Editor, tooltips, or IntelliSense may also appear blurry to some users.
The Solution: Because the new VS 2010 Editor is based on WPF, its font rendering has different advantages and limitations than the editor in previous versions. WPF supports only TrueType vector-based fonts, so selecting a bitmap or non-TrueType font will cause the editor to revert to the default font, i.e. Consolas. Some of the fonts in the Beta1 list in Tools->Options->Environment->Fonts and Colors are not TrueType fonts and will also not work, and we have now removed these fonts from the list for future versions of VS 2010.

We are also working with the WPF team to make significant improvements to the Editor's font rendering for the final version of VS 2010, which should reduce the blurriness of text in the Editor, tool windows, IntelliSense, and tooltips. In the meantime, it may help to run the ClearType tuning tool to improve font clarity in the VS Editor and other applications. You can also track the WPF team’s work on font rendering.

Mouse-Wheel Scrolling in the Editor is slow

Status: Fixed
The Bug: When using the mouse wheel, the editor scrolls very slowly or sometimes not at all. Other applications scroll as expected.
The Solution: The editor was not respecting system-wide settings for the mouse wheel as configured in the Control Panel. This has been fixed and should work correctly in the next release of VS 2010.

Scrolling with a Laptop Touchpad does not work

Status: Fix in progress by the WPF team
The Bug: When you try to scroll the editor with a laptop’s touchpad, nothing happens.
The Solution: None yet, but the WPF team is working on this issue. You can track its status here.

Editor does not scroll horizontally when selecting text with Ctrl+Shift+arrow keys

Status: Fixed
The Bug: When using Ctrl+Shift+arrow to select text, arrowing off the screen does not cause the editor to scroll horizontally. The caret goes off the screen, but you can’t see where it went.
The Solution: This has been fixed and should work correctly in the next release of VS 2010. The workaround for Beta1 is to use Shift+arrow instead of Ctrl+Shift+arrow or to select out-of-view text with the mouse.

Zoom: Scrollbars should not zoom, and there is no way to quickly return to 100% zoom

Status: Fix in progress
The Bug: When using Ctrl+mouse wheel zooming, scrollbars also zoom and quickly become too large or small. There is also no way to quickly return to 100% zoom.
The Solution: We are planning significant improvements to the zoom feature that should fix both of these issues for the next release of VS 2010. You can track these issues here and here.

Mouse Cursor becomes invisible

Status: Fixed
The Bug: When using Visual Studio, the mouse cursor sometimes becomes invisible, seemingly at random.
The Solution: We discovered and fixed a bug in the Regular Expression Editor extension, available on the Visual Studio Gallery or through the Extension Manager in VS. We believe that this bug is isolated to the RegEx Editor extension and is now fixed. If you downloaded v1.0 of the RegEx Editor it and are seeing this problem, please uninstall and reinstall it or use the Updates section of the Extension Manager to download the fixed version.

First item in a Smart Tag is not selected by default

Status: Fixed
The Bug: Invoking a smart tag by clicking on it or pressing Ctrl+. brings up the tag, but the first item in the correction list is not selected by default.
The Solution: This has been fixed and should work correctly in the next release of VS 2010.

Arrow keys do not move caret on wrapped lines

Status: Fixed
The Bug: When word wrap is enabled, pressing the up and down arrows may not move the caret.
The Solution: This has been fixed and should work correctly in the next release of VS 2010. For Beta1, the workaround is to disable word wrap or use the mouse to navigate away from a wrapped line.

Context Menu location is wrong

Status: Fixed
The Bug: Right-clicking in the editor causes the context menu to appear at the location of the blinking caret instead of the location of the mouse cursor.
The Solution: This has been fixed and should work correctly in the next release of VS 2010.

If you’re seeing other issues, please post a comment, check the Beta1 Editor forum, or file a new bug and we’ll investigate. Your feedback helps us find and fix bugs faster and improve Visual Studio, so keep it coming!

Brittany Behrens
Program Manager, VS Platform Team

Visualizing XML Doc Comments

VSEditor — Wed, 13 May 2009 23:33:00 GMT

One of our goals for the new editor is to make extensibility easier and more powerful than ever before. From custom text coloring to visual adornments painted directly on the editor surface, extensibility can dramatically change and improve the development experience. A recent article written by Lisa Feigenbaum, Microsoft’s Program Manager for the VB Community, showcases an adornment that enables rich WPF-based visualizations of XML doc comments:

You can read Lisa's entire article, titled “Documenting Your Code With XML Comments,” in MSDN Magazine. It not only highlights how this extension can transform the way developers read their code but also shares helpful information and tips about doc comments in general, so I’d encourage you to take a look!

Brittany Behrens
Program Manager, VS Platform Team

Editor Evolution

VSEditor — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:43:00 GMT

The new editor is featured in the cover story for the April issue of Visual Studio Magazine! The magazine publishes news and information for professional developers, and this month it is spotlighting Visual Studio 2010 in an article called “IDE Evolution”. Here are a few highlights:

“In VS 2010, developers can experience firsthand the beginning of the IDE's evolution: improved code navigation, annotation and extensibility with the WPF-based shell; better performance and scalability for native code; and fundamental improvements in debugging and test-driven development.”

“What we want is flexibility and extensibility. For instance, it's because the new editor is WPF-based that we can, for reasonable engineering cost, offer the ability to add inline adornments, margins, even 'heads up display' style extensions. ... The best part is you won't have to wait for us to do these things -- you want profiler information overlaid on your text? No problem. Go do it. Test coverage? Hot links to documentation? Online presence indicators based on e-mail names in comments? You could do all these things.”

The article gives a great overview not only of the new editor but also of Visual Studio 2010 as a whole, including the new shell, extension manager, Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF), and new features for the Team System (VSTS) editions. If you’re interested in hearing the latest buzz about VS 2010, I’d encourage you to read the article, available free online here.

Brittany Behrens
Program Manager, VS Platform Team

New Editor, New Font: 10-pt Consolas

VSEditor — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:18:00 GMT

To complete the VS 2010 Editor’s new look, we’re updating the default font to 10-pt Consolas! It’s a fixed-width font that Microsoft’s typography experts designed specifically for developers, so it’s great for reading and writing code. Consolas also has proportions that are closer to normal text than Courier New, the default for VS 2005 and 2008, making it more readable while still maintaining monospaced width. Here’s a side-by-side comparison:

You’ll see the new default font in the upcoming VS 2010 beta, but the Editor team is also interested in your feedback now. Although it’s new to the default role, Consolas has been around for a few years, so you can try it in your current version of Visual Studio. If you’re running Windows Vista, you already have Consolas installed; just go to ToolsàOptionsàEnvironmentàFonts and Colors in Visual Studio and change the font. If not, it’s available as a free download from Microsoft here.

To see the best results, I strongly recommend turning on ClearType in Windows XP or Vista before trying Consolas. ClearType improves font quality and readability in WPF and can be optimized for your display. For instructions on how to enable and configure it, check out Microsoft’s ClearType tuner here.

I hope you’ll enjoy Consolas’s natural readability for coding in VS. As always, please use the comments and e-mail link to send us your thoughts. Love the new font? Have ideas to improve it? Let us know!

Brittany Behrens
Program Manager, VS Platform Team

Visual Studio 2010 UI Unveiled

VSEditor — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 05:19:00 GMT

You may have seen a glimpse of the Visual Studio 2010 editor in the past couple of months, but you've never seen it look like this! At VSLive! in San Francisco last week, Visual Studio General Manager Jason Zander unveiled a completely new UI for Visual Studio 2010. It's built on WPF, which not only has a modern look but also gives VS users unprecedented ability to extend the editor with rich visualizations.

Take a look at this screenshot:

Like what you see? You can read Jason's blog post about the new UI here, or check out some of the press coverage here and here. You'll be able to play with the revamped Visual Studio 2010 when we release a beta version; the date hasn't been announced yet, but we'll keep you posted.

Now that the world has been introduced to more of the editor, the team will also be making more frequent posts to this blog, so be sure to check back here for weekly updates, tips & tricks, and discussions. And please make use of the comments and the Email link - we're listening, we will respond, and your feedback will help make Visual Studio 2010 even better.

Enjoy the new UI!

Brittany Behrens
Program Manager, VS Platform Team

A New Editor for Visual Studio

VSEditor — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:10:00 GMT

Today at TechEd EMEA in Barcelona Spain, Jason Zander demonstrated a ton of new features that are part of the upcoming Visual Studio 2010 & .NET Framework 4.0 release. One of the key features that was well received by the audience was the New Editor for Visual Studio. In his demo, Jason showed how the New Editor built on top of Windows Presentation Framework (WPF) and the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) enables developers to extend the editor by showing several fun editor extensions.

The first editor extension shown was actually provided by one of our VSIP Partners, DevExpress. They've been working with the Visual Studio 2010 CTP over the last few weeks to provide a custom comment & image viewer inside of the Editor which demo was used to display a sequence diagram inside the code file.

The next sample extension was the "Method History Pop-up". It made use of Adornments to color code each line depending on the last developer who had touched the line and used WPF to provide a graphical animated representation of the code churn over time.

One common request that I get is for the ability to view the history of a file. With the "Micro-V" extension, Jason showed a slider at the top of the editor which switched on a historical mode that allowed him to go back and view the editing history of the file with an inline diff.

The document map margin provides an zoomed out view of the code editor which allows users to quickly navigate to important landmarks in their code. This extension to the editor demonstrated extensible margins which allow developers to add views to the side or above & below the editor.

Jason also invoked up an XML Comment Adornment which replaced existing XML comments with a much easier to read view over the comments. This was yet another example of how adornments to the code can change the way developers read & modify their code.

If you're curious about the New Editor in Visual Studio or you want to try to write your own extensions, I'd recommend downloading the "Visual Studio 2010 CTP here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=922B4655-93D0-4476-BDA4-94CF5F8D4814

Sean Laberee

Lead Program Manager

VS Platform Team