A place for everything, everything in its place.
Benjamin Franklin

Many times I find that throughout my word day I have move and resized many of the various elements in the Visual Studio IDE. I might have expanded my properties windows, in order to see more of the property name. And I might have end up needing to shrink my toolbox window so I could see more of my code on the screen at one time. But sometimes you just want to hit reset and have everything go back to where it belongs.

Reset Window Layout

Alt, W, R

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Feedback:

If you have a favorite Visual Studio Tip or Trick be sure to share it in the comments. I’ll compile a list and post it for everyone once there are enough.

PowerPoint: 31 Days of Visual Studio 2008 Tips & Tricks.pptx (Note: PowerPoint is updated daily to include new items.)

I came, I coded, I compiled. If only Julius Caesar had been a developer, maybe Duke Nukem Forever would be released by now. So you made a quick change and need to build the solution as fast as possible and get it to the QA department now. What is the fastest way to do this?

Build Solution

Ctrl + Shift + B

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Feedback:

If you have a favorite Visual Studio Tip or Trick be sure to share it in the comments. I’ll compile a list and post it for everyone once there are enough.

PowerPoint: 31 Days of Visual Studio 2008 Tips & Tricks.pptx (Note: PowerPoint is updated daily to include new items.)

Pretty cool tip I learned about today on Digital Inspiration.

Vista SP1 is a BIG update, and it does not remove any of the files it replaces. This is because Vista SP1 allows you to uninstall Vista SP1, and rollback to your previous version of Vista. Unless you are Chuck Norris, I have a feeling you aren’t going to even consider this. So why not reclaim this 800+ megabytes worth of hard drive space?

Windows Vista SP1 Clean Up Tool

Go to the command prompt, and simply enter the following: vsp1cln.exe. It is fast, and I’ve tried it on several machines so far.

Here’s the official Microsoft TechNet documentation

Windows Vista SP1 File Removal tool (Vsp1cln.exe). Vsp1cln.exe is an optional tool that you can run after you install SP1. This tool removes older versions of components that have been updated in SP1, which are stored during the installation in case you need to uninstall SP1 later. Saving these older components increases the amount of disk space that is used. Typically, you should run Vsp1cln.exe if you want to reclaim this disk space after applying SP1 and if you will not need to uninstall SP1. Note, however, that you cannot uninstall SP1 after you run this tool. You can use this tool both online and offline, but you must have SP1 installed and you must use the correct version of the tool. If you are running this file on an offline image, you should use the Vsp1cln.exe included in the Windows OPK or AIK. However, if you are running this file online (on a computer that you are booted into), you should use the Vsp1cln.exe file located at %windir%\system32\vsp1cln.exe.

Hope it helps!

Output is pretty much the bread and butter of any application. Visual Studio has a whole window that is dedicated to dealing with various trace information. Sometime we would like to be able to save and view this information later or in another utility. But it is a real pain to do this process manually. There has to be an easier way…

Save Any Output Window

Ctrl + S

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Feedback:

If you have a favorite Visual Studio Tip or Trick be sure to share it in the comments. I’ll compile a list and post it for everyone once there are enough.

PowerPoint: 31 Days of Visual Studio 2008 Tips & Tricks.pptx (Note: PowerPoint is updated daily to include new items.)

So you have all kinds of windows and documents open in Visual Studio, everything from form designers to XML editors. Now you want to close everything and start something else, and you’re in a big hurry. What do you do?

Close All Documents

Alt + W, L

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Feedback:

If you have a favorite Visual Studio Tip or Trick be sure to share it in the comments. I’ll compile a list and post it for everyone once there are enough.

PowerPoint: 31 Days of Visual Studio 2008 Tips & Tricks.pptx (Note: PowerPoint is updated daily to include new items.)

One of the things I really like about working for ACS Technologies is we create software solutions for almost every OS platform out there. We are mostly a Microsoft shop, which is a perfect fit for me, but because we write solutions for churches and schools many of our products also work with other OS platforms. Really puts me in a great position to see the good and the bad for various solution platforms whether it is Windows Mobile, the iPhone, OS X, ASP .NET, and so on. I love it.

I while back I could resist picking up a used Apple PowerBook off eBay for a deal. I’ve been playing with it off an on since then and it's not all bad. One thing I have been disappointed with is until recently I haven’t been able to figure out how to connect to my laptop remotely from one of my other PC’s. Today I decided I would solve this problem.

Here’s the way I found to allow Remote Desktop Administration of an Apple from a PC:

Apple PC

Go to System Preferences, then open Sharing, in the Internet & Network section.

Enable Screen Sharing, and click Computer Settings…, make sure to enable “VNC viewers may control screen with password: ********”, and to assign a strong password. This is what will actually allow you to connect to your Apple PC.

Go to System Preferences, then open Network, in the Internet & Network section.

Locate your IP Address, probably want to either the Ethernet one or the AirPort one. You’ll use this to find your Apple PC.

Windows PC

You’ll need to download a VNC client, I recommend TightVNC, it is free, proven, and I like how it works. After that just run your VNC client, use your Apple PC IP address from above, along with your password from above and your golden.

Visual Studio allows developers to collapse code into regions, and so on. Sometimes this is helpful, sometimes not so much. But with the power of Visual Studio keyboard shortcuts we can make it less troublesome to manage this feature.

Here’s how:

Toggle Outlining Expansion

Ctrl + M, Ctrl + M

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Feedback:

If you have a favorite Visual Studio Tip or Trick be sure to share it in the comments. I’ll compile a list and post it for everyone once there are enough.

PowerPoint: 31 Days of Visual Studio 2008 Tips & Tricks.pptx (Note: PowerPoint is updated daily to include new items.)

It does take long to have a ton of code on your hands, especially when you need to find something in a hurry. What can we do? Do we have a chance? How can we best find something in all of our solutions files?

Here’s how:

Find in Files

Ctrl + Shift + F

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Feedback:

If you have a favorite Visual Studio Tip or Trick be sure to share it in the comments. I’ll compile a list and post it for everyone once there are enough.

PowerPoint: 31 Days of Visual Studio 2008 Tips & Tricks.pptx (Note: PowerPoint is updated daily to include new items.)

So, how long is your task list? Do you have a ton of TODO’s? Did you know you can use Visual Studio to track your TODO’s in a task list? All you have to do is mark each TODO as follows:

// TODO: this is an example of something I really need to do

If you do this you can see your TODO’s in Visual Studio Task List dialog, which you can always pull up with the following keyboard shortcut:

View Task List

Ctrl + \, Ctrl + T

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Feedback:

If you have a favorite Visual Studio Tip or Trick be sure to share it in the comments. I’ll compile a list and post it for everyone once there are enough.

PowerPoint: 31 Days of Visual Studio 2008 Tips & Tricks.pptx (Note: PowerPoint is updated daily to include new items.)

Have you ever gotten code from someone or somewhere and you were not “thrilled” with how it was formatted. Was it just formatted wrong? Then the “Format Document” keyboard shortcut is for you! It will take the file you have open and format all the code until it is valid. Personally I wish their was a “Format Document for Chris Craft” keyboard shortcut because Visual Studio is a lot more forgiving than I am. But that’s okay it is still a life saver and you will love it one day when it just make the code better, all in one simple keyboard shortcut.

Format Document

Ctrl + K, Ctrl + D

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Feedback:

If you have a favorite Visual Studio Tip or Trick be sure to share it in the comments. I’ll compile a list and post it for everyone once there are enough.

PowerPoint: 31 Days of Visual Studio 2008 Tips & Tricks.pptx (Note: PowerPoint is updated daily to include new items.)