Visual Studio Hacks

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Chapter 3, Navigating Visual Studio

#16 Take Control of Your Workspace

HACK

Sometimes the devenv.xml file can become corrupted. If you

find that auto hide stops working, you can’t open debug

windows any more, or you are stuck with a black window

that won’t go away, quit Visual Studio and delete devenv.xml

from your \Documents and Settings\<username>\Application

Data\Microsoft\Visual Studio\<7.1> directory. When you

restart Visual Studio, it will create a fresh version of the file

for you, and your problem should be resolved.

By default, the devenv.xml file contains a number of different window lay-

outs, including design layouts for each of the different languages as well as

debug and full-screen layouts. Any changes you make to the window lay-

outs are saved in this file and are remembered the next time you start Visual

Studio. When you are in debug mode, any changes you make to the win-

dow layout will affect only the debug windows layout. Next time you enter

debug mode, all of your windows will be in the same place. The other two

main window layouts are design and full screen.

You can also create your own custom window layouts using the VSWindow-

Manage power toy

[Hack #26].

Document Window

The document window is the window you use to edit a file. Each time you

open a new document, a new tab is created on the tab bar across the top of

this window. The document window is one of the places where