Add tons of useful commands to Visual Studio like collapsing all projects and opening a command prompt at the current location.
Readers of my columns here may have figured out by now that I’m a big fan of little tools which do one well-defined thing really well.
Gaston Milano’s Cool Commands does just that. His project, full of very useful little widgets, has just been updated for Visual Studio 2005. Download his tools, run the install.bat file, and you’ll have access commands for :
- Collapsing all projects in the solution explorer
- Opening a Command Prompt at a location
- Opening the project’s folder
- Switching to a demo font
- Using your mouse wheel to zoom
- Sending code selections via e-mail
Collapsing all projects, opening a command prompt, and opening a project’s folder all appear when pulling up a context menu in the Solution Explorer. The commands are all self-explanatory, and they’re all useful tricks.
Demo font, mouse wheel zoom, and selections via e-mail are enabled in the editor window. The first two are great aids for demos and code reviews where you may need to change font sizes to keep your audience happy. Toggle between normal display font and a demo font by selecting the context menu’s option. Press the control key and use your mouse wheel to scroll through larger and smaller font sizes.
Ever wanted to quickly send a snippet of code to someone via e-mail? Highlight the code, right-click in the editor window and select “Send by mail.” Your code will be copied into an e-mail ready for you to address, title, and send off on its merry way.
Perhaps the neatest enhancement from Milano’s tools is the Reference Manager he implemented to ease the pain in the keester that comes from having to slog through projects when you need to delete or update references.
This makes it a tremendously simple matter to find each use of a reference throughout your solution, or filter by a particular reference when you need to remove a reference as part of updating it. Use the “Find Reference” field to search for references, then remove them. You’re able to select multiple projects in the left pane which makes it a snap to add in new references or replace the outdated ones you’ve just deleted.
