Chapter 2. Browsing Visual Studio

In This Chapter

  • Becoming familiar with the development environment

  • Understanding solutions and projects

  • Browsing properties, servers, and code

  • Painting forms with visual designers

With Visual Studio 2010, you have access to hundreds of commands, tools, and designers. The Visual Studio Code Editor and Object Browser put the Microsoft .NET Framework's thousands of methods at your fingertips. You have everything you need to build powerful, world-class Windows applications and Web sites — if only you knew where to begin.

Making Your Way around Visual Studio

When you first open Visual Studio 2010, you see a screen that reflects a Visual Studio 2010 installation that uses the general development settings.

Note these features

  • Start page: This page is your dashboard for navigating Visual Studio 2010 and connecting to resources in the .NET community. The start page includes these features:

    • Recent Projects: A list of recently opened projects in Visual Studio 2010; also includes links to open and create new projects and Web sites

    • Getting Started: A list of links to resources to help you get started using Visual Studio 2010

    • Guidance and Resources: A list of links relevant to Visual Studio 2010 development processes, MSDN resources, and additional tools

    • Latest News: An RSS feed of the latest MSDN news

  • Solution Explorer: This task pane on the right side of the screen lists open solutions and the projects they contain.

  • Class View: This tab on the task pane in the lower-right ...

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