Default Keybindings Posters for VS2005

Keybindings poster courtesy of MSDN

Visual C#

Visual C++

Mouse or Keyboard

As software developers, we all get the point on keeping skills up to date. Whether that is learning a new language, or learning about design methodologies, it's an accepted norm in the software industry that we have to keep learning new things till we die (or retire).

My current area of study (in addition to the ongoing study of .Net 2.0) is all about getting to know the Visual Studio 2005 IDE better.

I started by visiting the MSDN Shortcut Key list which was useful for learning the existence of some of the obscure (to me at least) commands like Edit.SelectToLastGoBack. (selects from where the insertion point currently is to where it last was)

However after I got myself a copy of ReSharper in the Christmas sales and installed it, I found myself having to relearn the keyboard shortcuts again since ReSharper adds a whole slew of new commands as well as re-jigging the defaults. Now relearning shortcuts from two sets of documentation didn't really appeal, but rather than ending up resigning myself to lots of "right click, navigate oversized dropdown", I was lucky enough to stumble across SlickEdit Gadgets for VS2005.

More specifically the gadget Command Spy, this wonderful little utility records what command you use and can display what the shortcut keys are for that command. Which is really great when you've no idea what command rely lurks behind an option on some drop down list.

Adding CreateGUID to Visual Studio 2005 Tools menu

These steps can be used to add any external app to the Tools menu, though the example will use CreateGUID.

The first step is to go to Tools -> External Tools...

This will bring up a dialog detailing all the current menu contents. From within this dialog you can change the ordering of the the menu using the "Move Up", "Move Down" buttons, as well as deleting or adding new tool links. Clicking "Add" creates a new entry in the menu contents list.

The focus will move to the Title entry ready for you to give a new name for the entry. Enter "Create &GUID" (The '&' character can be used to specify that the next character is the hotkey for the command)

In the Command entry you can either browse for the guidgen.exe tool or enter the full path yourself. On a default installation for VS2005 the tool resides at: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\Tools\guidgen.exe"

Arguments and Initial directory are not needed by the tool.

Click apply and you now have the Create GUID entry back.

New Year New Blog

Well the new year resolution of starting the new blog got off to a crappy start but better late than never.

As can be gathered from the blog name, I'm Graeme and this is my blog.

As a neophyte .Net developer, the blog is going to be about .Net (of the C# flavor) and anything else software engineering related that I find interesting.