Yanesh Tyagi

As a hardcore developer I found that typing is easy to me then using mouse. Mouse is an obstacle. Taking hands off the keyboard is time consuning. It takes me out of comfort zone. I like to use keyboard where ever possible and efficient. Thanks to the developers of Visual studio 2005, they provided keyboard shortcuts to the most frequest tasks. Though the use of named commands is always recommended instead of keyboard shortcuts. But I found that these key strokes are most common and no one reassign these to custome actions. Its safe to get used to these shortcuts. Here is a list of my favourite shortcusts. Tool Boxes And Windows CTRL+ALT+L : View Solution Explorer. I use Auto Hide for all of my tool windows to maximize screen real estate. Whenever I need to open the Solution Explorer, it’s just a shortcut away. CTRL+ALT+X : Toolbox Window CTRL+ALT+O : Output Window CTRL+\, E : Error List Window CTRL+\, T : Task List Window F7 : Toggle between Designer and Source views. CTRL+PgDn : To...

Command Window: Ctrl+Alt+A Named commands are used to access VS features from Command Window. Visual Studio 2005 provides full intellisense support in the command window. I experienced that using named commands is much faster than accessing these features with mouse. Named commands allow you to access and use menu commands in the command window. To use named commands, simply type the name of menu. Press '.' and VS will provide intellisense. Type the name of the menu option or select it from intellisense. Example : To access Find Results 1 window you have to 1. Click on the 'View' menu and then 2. Click on the 'Find Results' and 3. Finally choose 'Find Results 1'. Now if you want to use named commands, 1. Press Ctrl+Alt+A to activate command window. 2. Type View.findresults1. You don't need to type full text. Intellisense provides yoy write text. Just press enter. Some Examples of Named Copmmands: Window.NewWindow : Open a new window on your...

Visual Studio 2005 provides some excellent document management capabilities. Most of the we are not aware of these features. One of the feature is open document tab groups. Unlike VS 2003, it shows only as much tabs as fits in the window width. There is no scrolling. Instead, VS 2005 provides dropdown menu to select from all open documents. Inseated of selecting open documents, you can also do some other functions. I am planning to write a series on useful-but-less-known features of VS 2005. This is second post in the series. ( read first post) In continuation to my previous post on managing open documents, here are some more tricks. Right click on the open document tab group. A context menu will appear with following options: Save default.aspx.vb Close Close all but this Copy full path Open containing folder New horizontal tab group New vertical tab group Save default.aspx.vb Allows you to save currently selected document. Currently selected document is the one which is open in the...

To close open documents selectively: 1. Go to Window -> Windows. 2. This will show list of all open windows (not just those which you see on the tabs). 3. Select the windows you want to close. Use shift (or ctrl) key for multiple selection. You can also use ctrl+A to select all windows. 4. Click "Close window(s)" button to close selected windows. I experienced that the speed of loading a project into visual studio is directly proportional to the number of open documents. Generally, we open the document as we need it. And then we don't close it. Visual studio 2005 displays only a few number of documents on the tabs. Rest remains open but are hidden. You can click on the down arrow near the 'X' button of the document window to select the open document. To keep you project loading fast, always keep minimum number of open documents.

  Popfly allows you to build gadgets and web pages. It also allows you to share your creation. Popfly provides online visual tools for creating Web pages and gadgets. You can host, share, rate, comments and even remix creations from other popfly users. Here are some things you can do with Popfly: Add some fun to your Facebook page, web site, or Windows Live Spaces page . You can easily spice up your Web site or blog with Popfly by adding customized games like Whack-a-mole or asteroids with pictures of your friends and family or create custom quizzes or polls that you can easily embed on your Web site. Build a Home Page: You can build a custom home page, say for your school’s sports team and choose from over 150 different themes, 10 styles, and 30 unique color themes for a unique visual design. You can then easily add things like team photos, a team schedule from an RSS feed, video from previous games, Virtual Earth maps with directions to game locations and more, all without w...

Question: How many people are required to purchase a laptop? Answer : Five. Question: And what is the flowchart of purchasing a laptop? Answer : Acquire 100% resources --> Drink beer --> Have lunch --> Go to theatre --> Watch movie --> Then release 60% of resources and utilize 40% resources to buy laptop --> The process is exhausting so re-energize 40% resources with more beer. Don't believe me? Read the story below (it's real): Bob is a software professional who is working for a large MNC. Currently he is posted at client side. He has a team of six people who share good chemistry. Today one of his team mate Mr. M decided to buy a laptop. His office is very near to largest electronics market so it was decided that team will go to buy laptop in the lunch time. Unfortunately, nobody in the team brought their car today. Usually people use company provided cabs for commute from home to office and back. So they decided to hire an auto. Bob and his mates aske...

Microsoft shipped Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 today. Here are some resources for VS 2008: 1. ScottGu's weblog is the primary and authentic source of information। २. Somasegar's Weblog 3. Paul Andrew blogged about a downloadable poster of commonly used types and namespace in .NET 3.5 (in pdf format), which is worth checking out. 4. View ASP.NET 3.5-specific videos at Microsoft's official asp.net website. 5. Brad Abrams wrote about Design Guidelines, Managed code and the .NET Framework 3.5 in his blog. 6. Here is a 31 minute video at Channel 9. 7. VS 2008 is not shipped with MSDN . You can Download MSDN Library for VS 2008 from here . 8. The details about VS 2008 express edition (free) are available here .