Visual Studio 2013 Code Editor – The Preview has hit our developer shores, and I have to say that I am suitably impressed. The IDE looks great (You can change the colour of the IDE to one of a few colours) and the enhancements to the Code Editor are fabulous.
I thought I would take a closer look at some of these new features and post them here for your reference. If you want to read more, see the blogs of Brian Harry and Zain Naboulsi.
If you haven’t downloaded the Visual Studio 2013 Preview, head on over to the Visual Studio site and get the preview today. I am sure you will like the following few tips.
Code Editor Features
Visual Studio 2013 Code Editor – Automatic Brace Completion
It has been one of the more popular productivity tools out there. Well with Visual Studio 2013, you no longer need an add-in. Visual Studio 2013 automatically adds closing parenthesis, quotes, braces and brackets for you as you type code in the Editor. No THAT is something really small, but so sweet.
Visual Studio 2013 Code Editor – Moving Code Up Or Down
Visual Studio 2013 also now allows you to move one or more lines up or down by using Alt + Up Arrow or Alt + Down Arrow. This is also a very nice little enhancement to the Visual Studio code editor.
Visual Studio 2013 Code Editor – Heads Up Display (HUD)
All the gamer / programmers out there, anyone that has ever played Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon will love this feature. Visual Studio 2013 includes a HUD. If you type a method, it will show references at the top of the method. Clicking on that will bring up the HUD that displays all sorts of indicators that will offer useful information to the developer. I love it!
Visual Studio 2013 Code Editor – Navigate To (Ctrl + ,)
Another very nice feature to Visual Studio 2013 is the Navigate To feature. Simply type Ctrl and comma (Ctrl + ,) and start typing any part of a symbol. Visual Studio then uses smart semantic searching to display the results to you. Double clicking on one of the results takes you straight to it in the code window. Now isn’t that killer!
If you have any other nice tips, share your experiences with the rest of us in the comments below.
