Visual Studio Hacks

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Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

Master the Editor

Hacks 6–15

Visual Studio is, above all else, a code editor. Before getting into some of the

more advanced hacks like creating and using add-ins, customizing Visual

Studio, or speeding up how quickly you write code, you must first learn how

to best take advantage of the editor that is at the heart of Visual Studio.

The editor is where you probably spend most of your time in Visual Stu-

dio—after all, the editor is where you write and edit your code. The editor is

also probably a key reason that you have decided to use Visual Studio as

opposed to a simple text editor like Notepad. The editor offers enhance-

ments like syntax coloring, IntelliSense, code formatting, and much more.

This chapter includes hacks on how to best take advantage of the clipboard,

including an add-in that can be used to easily paste long strings into the edi-

tor. This chapter also include hacks that look at how to get the most out of

IntelliSense and how to master the use of regions. Last, you will learn how

to choose the right editor and learn how to use a couple new editor features

in Visual Studio 2005.

Throughout this book, we will cover a lot of keyboard short-

cuts, but since keyboard shortcuts differ between developer

profiles, we will also include the name of the command for

that keystroke. For example, when referring to the Ctrl-C

shortcut, we will also include the name of the ...