August 4, 2003

Setting up multiple start-up projects

By default, a solution has a single start-up project, namely the project that is automatically launched when you click Debug | Start or press F5. However, you have the option to start multiple projects of the solution when you call Start, something that is very useful to automatically start, in

Marking strings with a different color in source code documents

When you build strings by concatenating hardcoded constant strings and variable strings, it’s easy to forget a closing double quote, and thus receive a compile time error when you launch or compile the program (actually, you see that there is a syntax error even before, because the statement gets underlined

Creating an ASP.NET Web Application in a physical folder of your choice

When you create a new ASP.NET Web Application, VS.NET by default creates a folder with the specified application name under the Visual Studio Projects folder (typically under :Documents and SettingsMy DocumentsVisual Studio Projects), and a folder with the same name under :Inetpubwwwroot. In the first folder it creates just the

Visually browsing hierarchical files

VS.NET has a nice feature that allows you to visually navigate through the content of hierarchical files, and quickly jump to a particular section. Hierarchical files are all those files written in XML-like syntax, such as .HTML, .ASPX and .Config files. To use this feature, click the View | Other

Creating a project into an existing folder

When you create a new project, VS.NET automatically creates a folder with the project’s name under the selected directory. If you name your project MyTestProject, and select an existing folder named c:My ProjectMyTestProject as destination directory, in reality the final project’s folder will be c:My ProjectMyTestProjectMyTestProject. This is a problem

Shortcuts to useful VS.NET’s commands

Visual Studio .NET has a number of useful features that are often underused by developers, because they are hidden under several menus and not easily accessible. Here is a list of keyboard shortcuts to some of these commands: Ctrl + – : moves the caret to its previous position. Ctrl