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Jimmy Bogard

Assistant to the assistant to the regional manager

Going lean in Visual Studio

Left unchecked, Visual Studio tends to get very cluttered:

I found I don't use any of these icons.  Copy, Cut, Paste, Undo, Redo?  Those are all keyboard shortcuts.  Comment and Uncomment?  Ctrl+K+C, Ctrl+K+U.  Save All?  Ctrl+Shift+S.

No more, I'm going lean.  None of these toolbars provided me value, taking up valuable screen real estate, so I got rid of them all:

 

That's about 80 pixels I saved, and about 5 more lines of code are visible.  Beyond that, I'm no longer distracted by a hundred little icons, each hoping they'll be clicked juuuuust once to prove their worth.

Published Jul 12 2008, 02:43 PM by bogardj
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Comments

 

James Thigpen said:

Wow thanks.  I never even realized that I never used them. They were there. I ignored them. I never questioned it.

It's kind of creepy. I think I'm a zombie.

July 12, 2008 6:47 PM
 

Jeffrey Palermo (.com) said:

Jimmy Bogard appropriately points out that Visual Studio gets really cluttered with toolbars that rarely get used . It's more productive to keep your hands on the keyboard, so that leaves little mousing. Even moving around the solution explorer doesn

July 12, 2008 10:01 PM
 

matt said:

An easier way to get really lean, really fast is full screen mode.

July 13, 2008 4:54 PM
 

Weekly Link Post 50 « Rhonda Tipton’s WebLog said:

Pingback from  Weekly Link Post 50 « Rhonda Tipton’s WebLog

July 13, 2008 6:04 PM
 

bogardj said:

@matt

Yeah, the full screen is nice.  I'm not fond of alt-tabbing through programs though.  I still click the toolbar (crazy, I know).  Until I get around my alt-tab fear, it'll be tough to go full screen.

July 13, 2008 6:54 PM
 

Visual Studio Hacks said:

My latest in a series of the weekly, or more often, summary of interesting links I come across related to Visual Studio. Visual Studio 2008 KB: Also applied to 2005. The Visual Studio Designer does not Respect Assembly Binding Redirection. No current

July 14, 2008 7:19 AM
 

matt said:

An intermediate step [instead of just embracing ALT-TAB] would be to use the window key to get quick and easy access to the taskbar while in VS fullscreen mode.

July 14, 2008 8:55 AM
 

Gabe Moothart said:

to go even more lean, you can turn off the class/method drop-down boxes below your tabs, which I never use either:

Text Editor | All Languages | General | Navigation bar

July 14, 2008 10:13 AM

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About bogardj

I'm a senior consultant with Headspring Systems in Austin, TX. My focus is using .NET technologies together with Agile methodologies. Back in 2005, I drank the Agile punch and haven't looked at a waterfall the same since.
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