Visual Studio

6 Of My Favorite Visual Studio Shortcuts

Welcome Back! I hope you enjoy the content on this site. If you have not done so already, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or become a fan of this blog on Facebook. Thanks for visiting!

These are some of my favorite and most used shortcuts in visual studio:

1. Ctrl + - and the opposite Ctrl + Shift + -  To move the cursor back or forward to the last position without having to scroll or switch  files.
2. Shift+Alt+Enter Switches to Full Screen Mode
3. Ctrl+K, Ctrl+C Comment a block,   Ctrl+K, Ctrl+U Uncomment the block
4. Shift + Alt + F10 then Enter expands the smart tag to insert a using statement or implement an Interface
5. Ctrl+K, Ctrl+D Auto format the file (Source, xml or  html)
6. Ctrl+M, Ctrl+ O Collapses all outlining to  definition and then Ctrl+M, Ctrl+M to toggle the current block to expanded or collapsed.

What about you what are your favorites. I would like this post to become a repository for the most used Visual Studio Shortcuts. So do share

Hope This Helps!

Hatim

Building Amazing Business Applications with Silverlight 4, RIA Services and Visual Studio 2010

A great tutorial by Brad Abrams about building business applications using Silverlight, RIA Services and Visual Studio 2010

7 Valuable Visual Studio Hidden Features

Visual Studio is a very powerful IDE and I have yet to find another IDE that comes close to all the features it offers. Yet they are some hidden gems that can make our every day tasks a little bit easier.

1. Under “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Text Editor” Create a String called “Guides” with the value “RGB(255,0,0), 80″ to have a red line at column 80 in the text editor.
2. Pressing ALT during selection, selects a square of text instead of whole lines.
3. Ctrl++ [Control, Plus] or Ctrl+- [Control, Minus] to navigate to previous position of the cursor and back
4. Ctrl+Shift+V to cycle through the Clipboard history. Visual Studio keeps a history of data in the clipboard
5. Ctrl+U and Ctrl+Shift+U to uppercase or lower case selected text.
6. Ctrl+L Deletes the current line.
7. Shift+F9 to bring the variable in QuickWatch

Hope this Helps.

Hatim

11 Optimization Tips For Visual Studio

Sometimes ago I compiled this list for myself and our team to help get things done faster and deal with visual studio quirks.

Remember if you mess things up you can always reset your Visual Studio Settings (Tools->Import and Export Settings->Reset All Settings)

Visual Studio Optimization Tips:

1. Disable F1. (Tools->Options->Environment->Keyboard) (I always end up hitting it by mistake when reaching for the escape key)
2. Disable "Animate environment tools" (Tools->Options->Environment->General)
3. Disable Start Page (Tools->Options->Environment->Startup)
4. Disable "Track Active Item in Solution Explorer" (Projects and Solutions).
5. Disable Navigation Bar (Tools->Options->Text Editor->C#)
6. Set "AutoToolboxPopulate" to false (Tools->Options->Windows Forms Designer).
7. Turn off Track Changes. (Tools->Options->Text Editor->Track changes)
8. Bind Ctrl+Shift+k to Edit.LineDelete
9. Bind Shift+Enter to Edit.LineOpenBelow
10. Bind CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+Z to Attach To Process
11. (Ctrl+K, Ctrl+D) to reformat the code when things get messy

If you have some tips on your own please share in the comments!

Hope this helps!

Hatim

5 Useful Visual Studio C# Snippets – Part 2

I initially published 5 Visual Studio c# Snippets yesterday and it got a lot of attention and had some positive feedback, so this is a follow up that I hope would be as helpful as the first one.

Reading an embedded resource as a stream

Specially when sending patches to customers, sometimes I need to embed an XML file that would contain some data that needs to be imported to the database in a compiled exe or dll to simplify the process for them. So I ended up creating a snippet on how to read an embedded resource

Shortcut: rembed

Sample Result:

Stream rulesReader = typeof(MyObject).Assembly.GetManifestResourceStream(

          typeof(MyObject), "Resources.AttestationContratWorkflow.rules");

Customization:

• The type of the object to get the assembly from
• The name of the embedded resource

ViewState property

Even though I avoid using  the viewstate as much as I can to keep the size of the page small but sometimes you really need to.

Shortcut: vstate

Sample Result:

public string Title
{
    get
    {
        if (ViewState["Title"] == null)
            return "My Title";

        return (string)ViewState["Title"];
    }
    set
    {
        ViewState["Title"] = value;
    }
}

Customization:

• The type of the property
• The name of the property
• The default return value

Null argument validation

I would say this is one of the basic best practices to have and to stick to. My Eiffel professor would be so proud of me

Shortcut: nparam

Sample Result:

if (context == null)
{
   throw new ArgumentNullException("context ");
}

Customization:

• The name of the parameter

Info Message Box

This snippets shows an Information Message box.

Shortcut: ibox

Sample Result:

MessageBox.Show(this, "My Information Message", "Information...", MessageBoxButtons.OK,

                 MessageBoxIcon.Information);

Customization:

• The message

Error Message Box

Same as the previous snippet but shows an error message instead

Shortcut: ebox

Sample Result:

MessageBox.Show(this, "My Error Message", "Error...", MessageBoxButtons.OK, 

                 MessageBoxIcon.Error);

Customization:

• The message

Download the snippets

Hope  this helps!

Hatim

Digg This

5 Useful Visual Studio C# Snippets

When working on a given project I always create Visual Studio snippets for repetitive tasks to save time and avoid mistakes. Of course each project has some specific requirements and therefore it’s not always the same code that is repeated.

The best snippets are the ones you would create yourself. But here are a few that I find are pretty generic and saved me sometime and hope you will find useful as well.

EventHandler

This snippet will create a generic event handler method. It’s pretty useful when working with ASP.Net controls and you don’t like to switch to the design view to then double click or go into properties of an element to generate the event handler by fear that the designer would mess something up.

Shortcut: evh

Sample Result:

void btnSubmit_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
}

Customization:

• The name of the method
• The EventArgs type

OnEvent

This one is a no brainer, so I use it to save time and avoid forgetting to check if the event is null before raising it.

Shortcut: onevt

Sample Result:

protected void OnEvent(EventArgs args)
{
    if (myEvent != null)
    {
        myEvent(this, args);
    }
}

Customization:

• The name of the method
• The EventArgs type
• The Event to raise

Singleton Class

We all need a singleton class  at one point or another in most of our projects. I think it’s the most used software pattern and so it deservers it’s own snippet. Oh, it’s thread safe

The implementation used is available here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms998558.aspx

Shortcut: snglt

Sample Result:

using System;

public sealed class Singleton
{
   private static volatile Singleton instance;
   private static object syncRoot = new Object();

   private Singleton() {}

   public static Singleton Instance
   {
      get
      {
         if (instance == null)
         {
            lock (syncRoot)
            {
               if (instance == null)
                  instance = new Singleton();
            }
         }

         return instance;
      }
   }
}

Customization:

• The class name

SqlDataReader with Stored Procedure

We generate most of our Data Access code but for custom business requirements we end up creating  specific stored procedures. So instead of copy/paste from another file I have created this snippet.

Shortcut: sqlproc

Sample Result:

using (SqlConnection sqlConnection = new SqlConnection(myConnectionString))
{

   using (SqlCommand sqlCommand = new SqlCommand("myStoredProcedure",sqlConnection))
   {

       sqlCommand.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;

       #region params
       //add your parameters here
       #endregion

       SqlDataReader dr = null;

       try
       {

           sqlCommand.Connection.Open();

           dr = sqlCommand.ExecuteReader();

           while (dr.Read())
           {
               //do your mapping here
           }

       }
       catch (SqlException)
       {
           //handle exception
       }
       finally
       {
           if (dr != null && !dr.IsClosed)
               dr.Close();
           if (sqlCommand.Connection.State != ConnectionState.Closed)
               sqlCommand.Connection.Close();
       }
   }

}

Customization:

• Connection string
• Stored Procedure name

Serialize/Deserialize an object from an XML string

I can never remember the correct syntax for doing this and I am always looking at an other project to copy/paste this code so I ended up creating a snippet for it too.

Shortcut: serial

Sample Result:

public static List<MenuGroup> Deserialize(string strXml)
{
   XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(List<MenuGroup>));

   StringReader reader = new StringReader(strXml);

   return (List<MenuGroup>)serializer.Deserialize(reader);

}

public static string Serialize(List<MenuGroup> items)
{
    XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(List<MenuGroup>));

    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

    StringWriter writer = new StringWriter(sb);
    serializer.Serialize(writer, items);

    return sb.ToString();
}

Customization:

• Type to Serialize

Download the snippets.

To add this snippets to Visual Studio then Tools –> Code Snippets Manager … select Import… and browse to where you extracted the downloaded file.

Happy coding!

Hatim

Digg This