YES!

This would rock. It might also be nice to setup something with a 3rd party company to get the same white card printed on a mouse pad (for people still using mouse pads), and include say a coupon or something for that product in the VS box.

Short answer: YES!

Long answer: Definitely - I find that one of the interesting things of graphical environments is that you have to "discover" useful features - but I think this has to change.

If you have a look at http://www.hutteman.com/weblog/2004/02/14-163.html, you'll see that JetBrains is planning a fair number of keyboard shortcuts in their VS.NET add-on.

The other thing to think about is that it probably takes a lot of time to configure and test all of these shortcuts, so you might as well publish them since you want people to use them. So, it wouldn't hurt if you make it easy for people to find them.

Also, it would be great if they could be configurable.

Hope this helps,
Dominique

Finally! I used to live and breath by quick reference cards when dealing with MVS and TSO and its dozens of subsystems on IBM mainframes. Even DEC used to publish a plethora of ref. cards for dozens of products...

Would it be possible for PDFs of the cards be made available for those who get their VS2005 licenses via MSDN Universal? It should REALLY NOT be limited to those buying a retail box.....

Also, you should proudly post hyperlinks to those PDFs on the various "MSDN Developer Centers" to encourage use of the hot, new, changed, and hard to remember shortcuts. This would go far to help those complaining about some of the shortcuts being changed in VS2005.

+1. An easy way to browse all keyboard shortcuts in the IDE would also be great.

I'd be more in favor of being able to view/print/copy-to-clipboard all the current shortcuts. A quick reference card is nice when I'm using the IDE out-of-the-box, but it's not as useful once I've added my custom shortcuts (which is usually one of the first things that I do).

Yes yes yes yes yes yes! Also, Steve mentions a great point about us MSDN subscribers that don't actually get the boxes: make a freely available PDF version!

YES. Particularly for the new VS.NET users. Starting a program with as many buttons and options as VS is a daunting task. 9/10 times the most commonly accessed (and useful) options are mapped to hotkeys. Having all of the hotkeys on a piece of paper would let new developers know where the essential functions are, and the fastest way to access them.

While I favor any move to bolster support for keyboard shortcuts on *everything*, I don't think a keyboard reference sheet would be helpful for me. I'd rather have an intelligent IDE that could give me that information. For example, you show the keyboard shortcuts alongside the menu items. This helps a great deal. (I first find the function I need from the menu, then I remember the shortcut if I use it frequently). More intelligent usage like this would be great.

Is there an easy way to close the Output Window with the keyboard? The only way I found is Alt-2, Shift-Escape. What a pain. It used to be just Escape in the 'good ol days'.

ed,

you can change the key binding for the command that closes tool windows to simply ESC, if you like. go to Tools/Options/Keyboard, and find the Window.CloseToolWindow command. you can see there that it's bound to CTRL-ESC. assign ESC to it right from that dialog.

also, you can get slightly more verbose feedback from the ide by going to Tools/Customize and clicking "Show shortcut keys in ToolTips" -- try doing that and then hovering over toolbar icons!

- chris

Chris -

Ah, but keyboard focus *still* has to be on the Output Window before Escape has any effect. Thus the required Alt-2. Holding shift doesn't bother me as much as the required 2-step process for closing the window. (alt-2, shift-escape).

Similar in subject, why does the Output Window always seem to steal my keyboard focus? Hit F7 (compile), and I lose keyboard focus (I was using that!). If there's a compiler error, hit F8 to go to the first error and I lose keyboard focus again! My goal here is to go to the error and *fix* the error. Why make me hit Escape to get my focus back? Needless to say, VC6 did this properly.

Thanks for the reply. I use that feature for the tooltip keyboard shortcuts, I like it.

+1.

my suggestion is that the shortcut list is in a shape that is easy to affix to either edge of your monitor.

for example, a piece of paper about one inch wide and ten inches high.

cheers
lb

Thanks for all your comments. We are going to work on delivering a soft copy of the quick reference guide for you in Whidbey. If you have tried out the Beta, you will notice that you are asked to choose a collection of settings when you start the IDE. Depending on what you choose, the resulting set of shortcut keys would be different. I think that makes having a quick reference guide even more critical.

Again, thanks for your feedback and for validating that there is a genuine need for this.

+1 to the quick reference sheet idea, but I really want to give a +10 to Victor Oscar's idea of being able to print out all current keyboard shortcuts.