Visual Studio .NET - Options…
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The Options… command also brings up the Options dialog box, shown in Figure 2-24. This dialog box allows setting a wide range of options, ranging from the number of items to display in lists of recently used items to XML Designer options.
The dialog box displays a hierarchical list of categories on the left side. Selecting any category allows you to drill down through the tree structure. Clicking on a detail item brings up the available properties on the right side of the dialog box.
Most of the available options are fairly self-explanatory. If you have any questions about specific settings, clicking on the Help button at the bottom of the Options dialog box will bring up context-sensitive help about all the properties relevant to the current detail item.
Figure 2-23. Customize dialog---Options tab
Figure 2-24. Customize dialog---Keyboard button
Window Menu The Window menu is a standard Windows application Window command. It displays a list of all the currently open windows, allowing you to bring any window to the foreground by clicking on it. Note that all the file windows currently displayed in the IDE also have tabs along the top edge of the design window, below the toolbars (unless you have selected MDI mode in Tools -> Options-> Environment -> General), and windows can be selected by clicking on a tab.
This is a context-sensitive menu. The menu items available for different circumstances are listed in Table 2-8.
Table 2-8. Window menu item commands
| Current window | Description of available commands |
| Design | Auto Hide All hides all dockable windows. Clicking on window’s pushpin icon turns AutoHide off for |
| that window. |
| New Horizontal/Vertical Tab Group creates another set of windows with it own set of tabs. |
| Close All Documents is self-explanatory. |
| Window list. |
| Code | Same as for a design window plus the following: New Window creates a new window containing the |
| same file as the current window (use this to open two windows to the same source file); Split creates |
| a second window in the current window for two different views of the same file; and Remove Split |
| removes a split window. |
| Dockable | This category of window includes the Solution Explorer, the Properties window, the Class View win |
| dow, the toolboxes, etc. These windows are dockable, as indicated by the pushpin icon in the upper |
| right corner of each. |
| Available menu items are the same as for a design window, with the addition of commands to dock, |
| hide or float a window. |
Help Menu The Help menu provides access to a number of submenus. Those that are not self-explanatory are described here.
Dynamic Help (Ctrl+F1) If you are developing on a machine with enough horsepower, Dynamic Help is a wonderful thing. Otherwise, it is quite a performance hog. (It can be disabled by unchecking all the checkboxes under Tools -> Options -> Environment -> Dynamic Help) Alternatively, just closing the window is sufficient to prevent the performance hit, and that way it is still available when you need it.
That said, using Dynamic Help is very simple. Open a Dynamic Help window by clicking on this menu item or pressing Ctrl+F1. Then wherever the focus is, whether in a design, code or dockable window, context-sensitive hyperlinks will appear in the Dynamic Help window. Click on any of these links to bring up the relevant help topic in a separate window.
Contents… (Ctrl+Alt+F1) / Index… (Ctrl+Alt+F2) / Search… (Ctrl+Alt+F3) These three commands provide different views into the SDK help system, allowing you to search by a (pseudo) table of contents, an incremental index, or a search phrase, respectively. The first type of search is an indexed search, while the latter two are full text searches, so you may get different results using the different search types using the same phrase.
The Help system exposed by these commands is the exact same Help system exposed in two other places by the Start button:
Programs -> Microsoft Visual Studio .NET -> Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Documentation
Programs -> Microsoft .NET Framework SDK -> Documentation
This Help tool uses a browser-type interface, with Forward and Back navigation and Favorites. The list of topics is displayed in the left hand pane, and the help topic itself, including hyperlinks, is displayed on the right.
Index Results… (Shift+Alt+F2) When searching for Help topics by Index, there are often many topics for a given index entry. In these cases, the multiple topics are listed in an Index Results window. This window will display automatically if this is the case. This command allows you to view the Index Results window if it has been closed.
Search Results… (Shift+Alt+F3) The Search Results window is exactly analogous to the Index Results window described previously, except it pertains to searching for Help topics by search phrase.
Edit Filters… The SDK Help system is voluminous, with information on the full array of topics which might be found in any .NET installation, as well as a ton of non–.NETstuff. The Edit Filters command allows you to restrict which Help topics will be searched. For example, if you are working exclusively in C#, you might set the filter to either Visual C# or Visual C# and Related. (The references of several O’Reilly .NET Nutshell titles are available as installable Dynamic Help files. For further information, see http://www.oreilly.net/.)
Check for Updates This command will check for service releases for your currently installed version of Visual Studio .NET. In order for this command to work, your machine must be connected to the Internet. If there is an update available, you will be prompted to close the IDE before the service release is installed.
Building and Running You can run your application at any time by selecting either Start or Start Without Debugging from the Debug menu, or you can accomplish the same results by pressing either F5 or Ctrl+F5, respectively. In addition, you can start the program by clicking the Start icon (
) on the Standard toolbar.
The program can be built (i.e., .exe and .dll files generated) by selecting a command under the Build menu. You have the option of building the entire solution or only the currently selected project. For a full discussion of application deployment, please see Chapter 20.
 This article is excerpted from Programming ASP.NET by Jesse Liberty and Dan Hurwitz(O'Reilly, 2003; ISBN 0596004877). Check it out at your favorite bookstore today. Buy this book now. |
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