Visual Studio Hacks [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hack 11. Select the Best Editor

Different editors can be used for different
file types, including some hidden possibilities.

A large part of learning to work with any
toolset is understanding what tool should be used and when it should
be used. Visual Studio contains a number of different editors,
including a Text Editor, XML Editor, CSS Editor, and many more. This
hack is about determining what editor should be used in what
situation and also explains how Visual Studio can be configured to
use a third-party editor as opposed to the native editor.

2.7.1. So Many Editors

Visual Studio contains a host of
different editors; you have probably
encountered a number of them.

2.7.1.1 Text Editor

The editor you are probably most familiar with is the Text Editor,
which is used to edit and work with most forms of text, including
source code. The Text Editor contains a number of configuration
settings that can be specified on a per-language basis; these
settings can be accessed through the Tools Options menu,
which can be seen in Figure 2-22.

Figure 2-22. Text Editor Options dialog

Using the Options dialog, you can decide whether or not to enable
word wrap, line numbers, and some other miscellaneous settings. Each
language can be configured independently of the other languages; each
is configured to different defaults initially.

As of Visual Studio .NET 2003, the VB.NET editor is set to Hide Advanced Members automatically. This is something you will most likely want to turn off, as it stops certain methods and properties from showing up in IntelliSense. Some of the hidden methods, like Page.RegisterClientScriptBlock, are very valuable and encourage better development and so should not remain hidden. The idea behind this setting is to filter members that won't normally be used by your average developer, but as it turns out, some of the members it hides are indeed very useful. Methods marked with the attribute [EditorBrowsable(EditorBrowsableState.Advanced)] will be hidden when this option is enabled.

The Text Editor is used for programming languages, so
it's the one you will probably work with the most.

2.7.1.2 HTML/XML Editor

The
HTML/XML Editor is used to work with
HTML, XML, and XML schemas. The HTML/XML Editor consists of a regular
textual view of the HTML or XML as well as a number of different
designers. Designers provide a visual representation of the HTML or
XML that you are editing. A designer for HTML shows you how the HTML
should look in the browser and provides WYSIWYG editing support. A
designer for XML shows a "Data"
view by creating rows and columns based on the structure of the
loaded XML. A designer for XML schemas shows a visual representation
of the schema and allows you to drag elements from a schema-specific
toolbox.

For the most part, these editors are all self-explanatory and work
perfectly, but if you are particular about your
HTML then you probably
don't like Visual Studio messing with it. Visual
Studio has a nasty habit of not only reformatting your HTML, but
sometimes even removing attributes or tags.

Visual Studio is getting better and better at working with HTML. Visual Studio 2005 is light-years ahead of previous versions when it comes to leaving your HTML alone and generates even better HTML than previous editions.

HTML purists will always want complete control over their HTML, how
it is formatted, and what is included. The best way to manage this in
Visual Studio is to simply not use the designer, but since by
default, all l and .xml
documents are opened with the designer, you will need to change some
settings to get this behavior.

To switch the default behavior, you need to change the settings
located under the HTML Designer folder in the Tools
Options dialog. These settings are shown in Figure 2-23.

Figure 2-23. HTML Designer Options

On this Options screen, you can determine what view will be used for
each type of file handled by the HTML designer. Changing the radio
button to HTML View (in which you edit the raw HTML) for each of the
file types will cause Visual Studio to also use the HTML view when
opening these files. (You can later switch to design view if you
like.)

2.7.1.3 Other editors

There are also editors for CSS files, resource files, and binary
files. I am not going to cover these here since they are easy to use
and don't have any hidden features that you need to
worry about.

2.7.2. Choosing Your Editor

Visual Studio will also select what
editor it feels is best, based on the extension of the file you
select, but sometimes it is beneficial to use a different editor than
the Visual Studio default. To select a different editor, you need to
use the Open With command, which you can access
in a couple of different ways. When selecting a file from the
Solution Explorer, right-click the file and choose Open With from the
context menu that appears. Or if browsing for a file with the File
Open dialog, first select the file, then click the arrow on the Open
button (see Figure 2-24), and choose Open With.

Figure 2-24. Open With option

After selecting Open With, you will see the Open With dialog, which
is shown in Figure 2-25.

Figure 2-25. Open With dialog

You can see in Figure 2-25 that the
Web
Service Editor is the default editor for the
.asmx extension. This is a great example of
when you need to specify a different editor: by default you can view
only a designer of the web service or the web
service's code behind (the file
that contains any C# or VB.NET for your web service)
.asmx file. There is no way to actually view and
edit the source code of the .asmx fileyou
must go through the designer. To overcome this restriction, select
the HTML/XML Editor from this dialog, and you will be able to
directly edit the .asmx file just as if it were
a normal ASP.NET file.

This dialog also allows you to set the default editor for a
file extension; this is
particularly useful when working with a new extension that Visual
Studio might not be set up to edit. Loads of different applications
use different extensions for what boil down to be XML files. When you
first open one of these files, just select the HTML/XML Editor and
click the Set As Default button (shown in Figure 2-25). Whenever you open this file type in the
future, Visual Studio will use that editor.

2.7.3. Use a Third-Party Editor

Although
Visual
Studio includes a number of nice editors, sometimes a third-party
application does it better. I have a particular liking for a CSS
editor application called TopStyle (http://www.bradsoft.com), and whenever I work
with CSS files, I use it.

To configure TopStyle as an editor in Visual Studio, all I need to do
is open a .css file, use the Open With option,
and from the Open With dialog, click the Add button. I then see the
Add Program dialog, which is shown in Figure 2-26.

Figure 2-26. Add Program dialog

From the Add Program dialog, I can browse for the program executable
and also give the application a friendly name, which will be shown in
the editor list. After adding TopStyle as an editor, I can then click
OK to return to the Open With dialog and there set TopStyle as the
default editor for .css files by selecting it in
the editor list and clicking the Set As Default button. Now whenever
I double-click on a .css file, Visual Studio
will launch an instance of TopStyle with the file open in it. If the
file is under source control, you will need to manually check it out
before opening it with the third-party editor.