In Visual Studio 2010, the Start Page is in fact a WPF control that is hosted within the IDE shell. As such, it is possible to tailor the Start Page to feature information or actions that are relevant to you. Rather than modifying the default Start Page, Visual Studio supports user-specific or Custom Start Pages. By default, this features is disabled so before you can start customizing your Start Page you have to enable the Allow Custom Start Page checkbox on the Environment

Because the Start Page is just a WPF control, you could simply create a new WPF control project and build your page from scratch. However, in most cases it is much simpler to start with the default Start Page and tailor it to suit your needs. To do this you need to copy the default Start Page from where it is installed into your Documents folder.

As you can see from Figure 3-2, you are able to modify the Start Page using either the WPF designer or directly in the XAML page. The XAML page is broken down into a number of sections. The best place to get started is where the TabItem tags are defined for the existing tabs. To create an additional tab, copy one of the existing tags and modify it to include your own content. For example, add the following tag after the Latest News tab to add information pertaining to your company.

Figure 3-2. Figure 3-2

XAML

<!-- Company Tab -->
<TabItem Header="Company" Height="Auto" x:Uid="Company_Tab"
         DataContext="{Binding Links.Content, Converter=
                       {StaticResource StringToXmlDataProviderConverter}}">
    <Grid>
        <Grid.RowDefinitions>
            <RowDefinition Height="Auto"></RowDefinition>
            <RowDefinition Height="*"></RowDefinition>
        </Grid.RowDefinitions>
        <TextBlock Foreground="#E8E8E8" Margin="15" TextWrapping="Wrap"
               x:Uid="Information_Paragraph" >
            The Company has put a lot of effort into writing this custom

Start Page so that you can quickly access information relevant to
            your job, the projects you are working on etc.
        </TextBlock>
    </Grid>
</TabItem>

As soon as you save this change, if you click back to the Start Page tab in Visual Studio 2010 you will notice that your changes have already been applied, giving you a new Company tab, as shown in Figure 3-3.

Figure 3-3. Figure 3-3

Of course, if you want to do away with the default Start Page layout, you can remove any of the existing elements and replace it with your own layout, information, and functionality. To do this, select the elements either in the designer or the XAML page and delete them. Then use any of the WPF controls in your Toolbox to build your own Start Page interface.

To extend the functionality of the Start Page further you may want to execute code on particular events. The Start Page itself doesn't support having a code-behind file in which to code event handlers. However, you can encapsulate your functionality into a user control that can then be used on your Start Page.

With your Start Page project open, created in the previous section, add a new project in which to place the control you are going to create. To do this, select File

You have now created a control with basic functionality encapsulated within it. Follow these steps to now use this control within your Start Page:

XAML

<!-- Company Tab -->
<TabItem Header="Company" Height="Auto" x:Uid="Company_Tab"
         DataContext="{Binding Links.Content, Converter=
                       {StaticResource StringToXmlDataProviderConverter}}">
    <Grid>
        <Grid.RowDefinitions>
            <RowDefinition Height="Auto"></RowDefinition>
            <RowDefinition Height="*"></RowDefinition>
        </Grid.RowDefinitions>
        <TextBlock Foreground="#E8E8E8" Margin="15" TextWrapping="Wrap"
               x:Uid="Information_Paragraph" >
            The Company has put a lot of effort into writing this custom
            Start Page so that you can quickly access information relevant to your
            job, the projects you are working on etc.
        </TextBlock>
        <my:CompanyPortalControl Grid.Row="1" HorizontalAlignment="Left"
                                 Margin="6,12,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" />
    </Grid>
</TabItem>

If you now save all files (Ctrl+Shift+S) and select the Start Page tab in Visual Studio 2010, you will see an error as the assembly containing your CompanyPortalControl cannot be found. To fix this issue, you need to copy the CompanyStartPageControls.dll into the c:Program FilesMicrosoft Visual Studio 10.0Common7IDEStartPageAssemblies directory. This directory doesn't exist by default, so you will need to create it prior to copying the assembly in there.

Once you have copied CompanyStartPageControls.dll, you need to restart Visual Studio. Your start page should display as shown in Figure 3-4.

Figure 3-4. Figure 3-4

If you click the Company Website button, it will launch your company portal in your external web browser, directly from the Start Page.

Once a tool window or toolbar has been closed it can be difficult to locate it again. Luckily, most of the most frequently used tool windows are accessible via the View menu. Other tool windows, mainly related to debugging, are located under the Debug menu.

All the toolbars available in Visual Studio 2010 are listed under the View

Once a toolbar is visible, you can customize which buttons are displayed, either via View

Figure 3-5. Figure 3-5

After opening multiple items you'll notice that you run out of room across the top of the editor space and that you can no longer see the tabs for all the items you have open. Of course, you can go back to the Solution Explorer window and select a specific item. If the item is already open it will be displayed without reverting to its saved state. However, it is still inconvenient to have to find the item in the Solution Explorer.

Luckily, Visual Studio 2010 has a number of shortcuts to the list of open items. As with most document-based applications, Visual Studio has a Windows menu. When you open an item its title is added to the bottom section of this menu. To display an open item just select the item from the Windows menu, or click the generic Windows item, which displays a modal dialog from which you can select the item you want.

Another alternative is to use the drop-down menu at the end of the tab area of the editor space. Figure 3-6 shows the drop-down list of open items from which you can select the item you want to access.

Figure 3-6. Figure 3-6

Figure 3-6 (right) is the same as Figure 3-6 (left) except for the drop-down icon. This menu also displays a down arrow, but this one has a line across the top. This line indicates that there are more tabs than can fit across the top of the editor space.

Another way to navigate through the open items is to press Ctrl+Tab, which displays a temporary window, as shown in Figure 3-7. It is a temporary window because when you release the Ctrl key it disappears. However, while the window is open you can use the arrow keys or press Tab to move among the open windows.

Figure 3-7. Figure 3-7

The Ctrl+Tab window is divided into three sections, which include the active tool windows, active files (this should actually be active items because it contains some items that don't correspond to a single file), and a preview of the currently selected item. As the number of either active files or active tool windows increases, the windows expand vertically until there are 15 items, at which point an additional column is formed.

If you right-click the tab of an open item, you will see a hidden context menu that gives you a quick way to do common tasks such as save or close the file that's associated with the tab. Two particularly useful actions are Close All But This and the Open Containing Folder. These are self-descriptive as the former closes all tabs other than the one you clicked to get the context menu, while the latter opens the folder that contains the file in Windows Explorer. Now that all windows are dockable, there are also actions to Float or Dock as Tabbed Document, which are enabled depending on what state the tab is in.

Each tool window has a default position, which it will resume when it is opened from the View menu. For example, View

You will notice that as you unpin a tool window it slides back against the edge of the IDE, leaving visible a tag displaying the title of the tool window. This animation can be annoying and time-consuming when you have tool windows unpinned. On the Environment node of the Options dialog, you can control whether Visual Studio should automatically adjust the visual experience based on client performance. Alternatively, you can elect to uncheck the Enable rich client visual experience option.

Most developers accept the default location of tool windows, but occasionally you may want to adjust where the tool windows appear. Visual Studio 2010 has a sophisticated system for controlling the layout of tool windows. In Chapter 1 you saw how you could use the drop-down, next to the Pin and Close buttons at the top of the tool window, to make the tool window floating, dockable, or even part of the main editor space (using the Tabbed Document option).

When a tool window is dockable, you have a lot of control over where it is positioned. In Figure 3-8 you can see the top of the Properties window, which has been dragged away from its default position at the right of the IDE. To begin dragging, you need to make sure the tool window is pinned and then click either the title area at the top of the tool window or the tab at the bottom of the tool window and drag the mouse in the direction you want the window to move. If you click in the title area you'll see that all tool windows in that section of the IDE will also be moved. Clicking the tab results in only the corresponding tool window moving.

Figure 3-8. Figure 3-8

As you drag the tool window around Visual Studio 2010, you'll see that translucent icons appear at different locations around the IDE. These icons are a useful guide to help you position the tool window exactly where you want. In Figure 3-9 the Data Sources tool window has been pinned against the left side. Now when the Properties window is positioned over the left icon of the center image, the blue shading again appears on the inside of the existing tool window. This indicates that the Properties tool window will be pinned to the right of the Data Sources tool window and visible if this layout is chosen. If the far left icon was selected, the Properties tool window would again be pinned to the left of the IDE, but this time to the left of the Data Sources window.

Figure 3-9. Figure 3-9

Alternatively, if the Properties tool window is dragged over the Data Sources tool window as in Figure 3-10, the center image will move over the existing tool window. This indicates that the Properties tool window will be positioned within the existing tool window area. As you drag the window over the different quadrants, you will see that the blue shading again indicates where the tool window will be positioned when the mouse is released. In Figure 3-10 it indicates that the Properties tool window will appear below the Data Sources tool window.

Figure 3-10. Figure 3-10

Some of the first things that presenters change in Visual Studio are the fonts and colors used in the editor space, in order to make the code more readable. However, it shouldn't just be presenters who adjust these settings. Selecting fonts and colors that are easy for you to read and that aren't harsh on the eyes will make you more productive and enable you to code for longer without feeling fatigued. Figure 3-11 shows the Fonts and Colors node of the Options dialog, where you can make adjustments to the font, size, color, and styling of different display items. One thing to note about this node in the Options dialog is that it is very slow to load, so try to avoid accidentally clicking it.

Figure 3-11. Figure 3-11

To adjust the appearance of a particular text item within Visual Studio 2010, you first need to select the area of the IDE that it applies to. In Figure 3-11 the Text Editor has been selected, and has been used to determine which items should appear in the Display Items list. Once you have found the relevant item in this list, you can make adjustments to the font and colors.

When choosing a font, remember that proportional fonts are usually not as effective for writing code as non-proportional fonts (also known as fixed-width fonts). As indicated in Figure 3-11, fixed-width fonts are distinguished in the list from the variable-width types so they are easy to locate.

When you are editing a file, Visual Studio 2010 automatically color-codes the code based on the type of file. For example, VB code highlights keywords in blue, variable names and class references are in black, and string literals are in red. In Figure 3-12 you can see that there is a line running up the left side of the code. This is used to indicate where the code blocks are. You can click the minus sign to condense the btnSayHello_Click method or the entire Form1 code block.

Various points about visual guides are illustrated in Figures 3-12 to 3-14. Those readers familiar with VB.NET will realize that Figure 3-12 is missing the end of the line where the method is set to handle the Click event of the btnSayHello button. This is because the rest of the line is being obscured by the edge of the code window. To see what is at the end of the line, the developer has to either scroll the window to the right or use the keyboard to navigate the cursor to the end of the line. In Figure 3-13, word wrap has been enabled via the Options dialog (see the Text

Figure 3-12. Figure 3-12

Figure 3-13. Figure 3-13

Figure 3-14. Figure 3-14

Unfortunately, enabling word wrapping can make it hard to work out which lines have been wrapped. Luckily, Visual Studio 2010 has an option (immediately below the checkbox to enable word wrapping in the Options dialog) that can display visual glyphs at the end of each line that will indicate a line has been wrapped to the next line, as you can see in Figure 3-14. In this figure you can also see two other visual guides. On the left, outside the code block markers, are line numbers. These can be enabled via the Line Numbers checkbox below both the Word Wrap and Visual Glyphs checkboxes. The other guide is the dots that represent space in the code. Unlike the other visual guides, this one can be enabled via the Edit

If you have a number of tool windows and multiple toolbars visible, you will have noticed that you quickly run out of space for actually writing code. For this reason, Visual Studio 2010 has a full-screen mode that you can access via the View

Figure 3-15. Figure 3-15

To enhance the experience of editing, Visual Studio 2010 uses line-level tracking to indicate which lines of code you have modified during an editing session. When you open a file to begin editing there will be no line coloring. However, when you begin to edit you will notice that a yellow mark appears next to the lines that have been modified. In Figure 3-16 you can see that the MessageBox line has been modified since this file was last saved.

Figure 3-16. Figure 3-16

When the file is saved, the modified lines will change to having a green mark next to them. In Figure 3-17 the first MessageBox line has changed since the file was opened, but those changes have been saved to disk. However, the second MessageBox line has not yet been saved.

Figure 3-17. Figure 3-17

Note

If you don't find tracking changes to be useful, you can disable this feature by unchecking the Text Editor

Visual Studio 2010 ships with many ways to perform the same action. Menus, toolbars, and various tool windows provide direct access to many commands, but despite the huge number available, many more are not accessible through the graphical interface. Instead, these commands are accessed (along with most of those in the menus and toolbars) via keyboard shortcuts.

These shortcuts range from the familiar Ctrl+Shift+S to save all changes, to the obscure Ctrl+Alt+E to display the Exceptions dialog window. As you might have guessed, you can set your own keyboard shortcuts and even change the existing ones. Even better, you can filter the shortcuts to operate only in certain contexts, meaning you can use the same shortcut differently depending on what you're doing.

Figure 3-18 shows the Keyboard node in the Environment section of the Options dialog with the default keyboard mapping scheme selected. If you want to change to use a different keyboard mapping scheme, simply select it from the drop-down and hit the Reset button.

Figure 3-18. Figure 3-18

The listbox in the middle of Figure 3-18 lists every command that is available in Visual Studio 2010. Unfortunately, this list is quite extensive and the Options dialog is not resizable, which makes navigating this list difficult. To make it easier to search for commands, you can filter the command list using the Show Commands Containing textbox. In Figure 3-18 the word Build has been used to filter the list down to all the commands starting with or containing that word. From this list the Build.BuildSolution command has been selected. Because there is already a keyboard shortcut assigned to this command, the Shortcuts for Selected Command drop-down and the Remove button have been enabled. It is possible to have multiple shortcuts for the same command, so the drop-down enables you to remove individual assigned shortcuts.

The remainder of this dialog enables you to assign a new shortcut to the command you have selected. Simply move to the Press Shortcut Keys textbox and, as the label suggests, press the appropriate keys. In Figure 3-18 the keyboard chord Ctrl+Alt+B has been entered, but this shortcut is already being used by another command, as shown at the bottom of the dialog window. If you click the Assign button, this keyboard shortcut will be remapped to the Build.BuildSolution command.

To restrict a shortcut's use to only one contextual area of Visual Studio 2010, select the context from the Use New Shortcut In drop-down list. The Global option indicates that the shortcut should be applied across the entire environment, but we want this new shortcut to work only in the editor window, so the Text Editor item has been selected in Figure 3-18.

Several options relate to projects and solutions. The first of these is perhaps the most helpful — the default locations of your projects. By default, Visual Studio 2010 uses the standard Documents and Settings path common to many applications (see Figure 3-19), but this might not be where you'll want to keep your development work.

Figure 3-19. Figure 3-19

You can also change the location of template files at this point. If your organization uses a common network location for corporate project templates, you can change the default location in Visual Studio 2010 to point to this remote address rather than map the network drive.

You can adjust a number of other options to change how projects and solutions are managed in Visual Studio 2010. One of particular interest is Track Active Item in Solution Explorer. With this option enabled, the layout of the Solution Explorer changes as you switch among items to ensure the current item is in focus. This includes expanding (but not collapsing again) projects and folders, which can be frustrating on a large solution because you are continually having to collapse projects so that you can navigate.

Another option that relates to solutions, but doesn't appear in Figure 3-19, is to list miscellaneous files in the Solution Explorer. Say you are working on a solution and you have to inspect an XML document that isn't contained in the solution. Visual Studio 2010 will happily open the file, but you will have to reopen it every time you open the solution. Alternatively, if you enable Environment Documents Show Miscellaneous Files in Solution Explorer via the Options dialog, the file will be temporarily added to the solution. The miscellaneous files folder to which this file is added is shown in Figure 3-20.

Figure 3-20. Figure 3-20

The Projects and Solutions

Figure 3-21. Figure 3-21

To reduce the amount of time it takes to build your solution, you may want to increase the maximum number of parallel builds that are performed. Visual Studio 2010 can build in parallel only those projects that are not dependent, but if you have a large number of independent projects this might yield a noticeable benefit. Be aware that on a single-core or single-processor machine this may actually increase the time taken to build your solution.

Figure 3-21 shows that projects will Always Build when they are out of date, and that if there are build errors the solution will not launch. Both these options can increase your productivity, but be warned that they eliminate dialogs letting you know what's going on.

VB programmers have four compiler options that can be configured at a project or a file level. You can also set the defaults on the Projects and Solutions

Option Strict takes enforcing good programming practices one step further by forcing developers to explicitly convert variables to their correct types, rather than let the compiler try to guess the proper conversion method. Again, this results in fewer runtime issues and better performance.