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Learn how to easily navigate projects and files, remap keyboard shortcuts to suit your personal preferences and use Outlining to make large classes easily readable.
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[SOUND].
0:00
Hi, I'm Dean, and I'm a software engineer.
0:05
Writing software is a rewarding but
difficult job.
0:08
Luckily, we have tools like
Visual Studio to help us along the way.
0:11
Like any other tool,
0:15
your level of efficiency will
be determined by how you use it.
0:16
In this workshop, we're going to go over
some tips and tricks that will save you
0:19
time and put you on the path to
becoming a Visual Studio power user.
0:22
Let's get started with something that
you'll spend a lot of your career doing,
0:27
navigating projects and code.
0:31
If you're anything like me,
you'll probably find yourself in a state
0:34
where you have quite a few tabs open
in Visual Studio at any given time.
0:36
The ability to manage these tabs
efficiently will help you immensely when,
0:40
for example, you're switching between an
HTML file and a CSS file that affects it.
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Keyboard shortcuts are a quick and
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natural way to manage your tabs without
taking your hands off your keyboard.
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If I hold the control key down and
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press tab once, I'll see a list of
currently open tabs and tool windows.
0:56
My current tab shows up at the top
of the list followed by my
1:01
other open tabs in the order in
which they most recently had focus.
1:04
When I release the control key,
the highlighted tab will gain focus.
1:08
Since my previously focused
tab is now position two,
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I can quickly switch back to
it by pressing Ctrl+Tab again.
1:16
To close a tab, press Ctrl+F4.
1:20
If your tabs become too cluttered,
you can close all but
1:22
one by right clicking on the tab you wish
to keep, and selecting close all but this.
1:26
If you want to get rid of all of
your tabs, right click on a tab and
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select close all documents.
1:34
Next we're going to check out navigate
backward and navigate forward.
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You can use these buttons if you
prefer them over keyboard shortcuts.
1:42
I like keyboard shortcuts,
so I'm going to use those.
1:46
I'm curious about this method, so
I'm going to navigate to definition and
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check it out.
1:57
With my curiosity satisfied, I want to go
back to exactly where I was previously at.
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Navigate backward control hyphen, will
bring my cursor back to where I left off.
2:04
Navigate forward control shift hyphen,
2:10
will bring my cursor
forward to history again.
2:13
Visual Studio tries to only remember
interesting changes, which means that if I
2:17
only move my cursor one line away,
it won't create a new history entry.
2:21
Sometimes we have to deal
with extremely large files.
2:28
Outlining is designed to make this
task more manageable by collapsing and
2:31
expanding text.
2:34
Take this large class for instance, just
scrolling through it is time consuming.
2:36
Let's see what happens when I collapse to
definitions by holding the control key and
2:41
pressing M then O.
2:46
Now I can easily scroll through and
look at the method definitions.
2:50
When I want to expand text that has been
collapsed, I can press the plus icon to
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the left of the text, or
put my cursor on the hidden text and
2:59
use the keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+M,
to toggle outlining expansion.
3:02
When developers talk to
each other about code,
3:09
an easy way to reference specific
lines of code is by line number.
3:11
Let's say somebody has a question
about AccountController.cs line 315.
3:15
We can navigate to line 315
using the shortcut go to line.
3:20
Press Ctrl+G, input the line
number you want to go to, and
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press Enter to go there.
3:28
Another handy trick is scrolling
a document using your keyboard.
3:30
If you press the up or down arrow it
will move your cursor, but won't scroll
3:33
the document unless your cursor is
at the top or bottom of the screen.
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If you hold the control key,
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the up and down arrows
immediately scroll the document.
3:44
Note that Visual Studio will automatically
move the cursor before allowing it to go
3:49
off screen.
3:53
Find matching brace allows you
to navigate between opening and
3:58
closing braces or tags.
4:01
On this method, I am at the opening brace
and I can find the matching, in this case,
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closing brace by pressing Ctrl ].
4:07
Note that Visual Studio also
highlights the matching brace visually.
4:12
The same method can be used to find
opening and closing tags in HTML.
4:16
This can be really handy
with larger HTML files.
4:20
Now that you have a feeling for
how powerful keyboard shortcuts can be for
4:23
navigation, I'm going to show you how
to remap your keyboard shortcuts.
4:26
Some commands aren't mapped
to anything by default, and
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others you might want to remap because
you don't like their default mapping.
4:33
Lets say, I want to map find matching
brace to control fb, for find brace.
4:37
Go to tools, options, environment,
keyboard and search for brace.
4:43
We see at the command is
named edit.gotobrace.
4:51
Put your focus in the press
short cut keys text box and
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press the shortcut keys
you want to assign.
4:58
After they show up press assign.
5:01
We can now use control F,
B, for find matching brace.
5:07
Watch out for
accidental keyboard shortcut collisions.
5:12
If I try to assign control
B to this shortcut,
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Visual Studio will show me
that is already in use.
5:17
Assigning control B to find matching
brace will remove it from debug.function
5:20
breakpoint.
5:25
That's it.
5:27
With these shortcuts, you should be
able to quickly navigate projects and
5:28
files with ease.
5:31
You're already on your way to becoming
a Visual Studio power user, and
5:32
we're just getting started.
5:35
In the next video, I'll show you how
Visual Studio can edit your code for you.
5:36
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