prod-guide.md

Visual Studio Productivity Guide

By Misty Hays

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Why a Productivity Guide?

The Productivity Guide serves as a tool for developers to save time when writing code. Instead of searching for documentation, shortcuts, and other resources, developers can find useful information in one place. This guide focuses on Visual Studio in the following areas: general tips, navigation and layout, debugging and error handling, refactoring, cloud, keybindings and shortcuts, performance, extensions, and others. It is a living document.

General

• Learn Shortcuts with Ctrl+Q
• Vertical tabs are now in Preview
• Organize recent templates by pinning, unpinning in New Project Dialog
• See quick locations of recently used projects/solutions/folders in search box in the start window
• Newly installed project templates are indicated with a "New" label (after 5 times it goes away)
• Tutorials and resources based on your workload
• Not enough requirements to complete a piece of code? Mock it using task list
• Solution Explorer shortcuts
• Set bookmarks in code
• IntelliSense code suggestions
• Understand your code structure then: use code map
• Shortcut tips for Visual Studio
• Creating code snippets
• Use 'git diff -w' to ignore whitespace modifications caused by the document formatting
• How saved window layouts can save you time
• Visual Studio productivity tips
• Track Active Item in Solution Explorer

Navigation, layout

• Jump to location in file then: use map mode
• See frequently used files then: use Edit/Go To Recent File
• Move Properties window to the right-side
• Move Solution Explorer and tabs to the left-side (less distance to move the mouse, less eye movement from Solution Explorer -> Test Explorer -> Team Explorer
• Detach/undock the “Changes” tab from Team Explorer and keep it as a subtab of the Solution Explorer group. That way, you can see the number of pending changes and quickly get the diffs.
• Default position of the debugging buttons can be docked using “debug.toolBarLocation”: “docked”

Debugging, errors

• Display certain errors then: use Error List
• Fix errors inline then: use light bulbs
• See what changes have been made to your code and the impact of those changes
• Use Live Share to debug together in real time, no matter the language or platform
• Use Interactive Window to write and test small code
• Visual Studio Debugger
• Save time debugging

Refactoring

• Adjust fonts with Fonts and Colors
• Change brace formatting with Formatting/New Lines
• Change your indentation with Tabs
• Copy JSON fragments with Paste Special
• Use Scope to This to declutter large projects
• 

Cloud

• Build for the cloud
• Azure project templates
• Easy deployment
• If you’re dealing with an issue that is hard to reproduce locally on your machine
• Manage your Azure resources and resource groups with Cloud Explorer
• Azure Repos Git tutorial
• Kubernetes: Up and Running

Keybindings

• Configure keyboard shortcuts using Options dialog box
• Multiple cursors: Alt+Shift+arrow (or down)
• Alt+click+drag selecting instead of copy/paste

Performance

• Disable WPF designer if you prefer to only see the XAML
• Disable the JavaScript analysis if unnecessary for your work

Extensions

• GitHub Flow with Visual Studio
• C/C++ and C# that improves IDE features
• Trailing Whitespace Visualizer
• Markdown Editor
• Tools to optimize any JPEG, PNG and GIFs
• VsVim
• C# productivity enhancer
• Generate XML Comments from your code, maintain clean and up-to-date documentation
• Full support for static HTML, Razor and WebForms
• Arduino IDE for Visual Studio
• Color output for build and debug windows (makes it easier to focus on the important parts of the code)
• Productivity Power Tools 2017/2019
• Code alignment
• SpellChecker
• Provides ZenCoding for the HTML Editor - full support for static HTML, Razor and WebForms
• Color Theme Editor
• Generate TypeScript files from C# code files using TypeScript Templates
• SuperCharger
• Switch between themes and window layouts quickly
• MatchMargin
• Add color to your Visual Studio Text Editor88
• Roslynator

Other Docs, resources

• Accessibility tips and tricks
• 10/28 Release Notes
• Visual Studio 2019 documentation
• Install and manage Nuget packages in Visual Studio
• Code like Scott Hanselman
• Code like Mads Kristensen
• Create a new Git repo
• VS Product Lifecycle and Servicing
• How to modify your workload
• Visual Studio main
• Customizing CMake settings