Visual Studio Hacks [Electronic resources]

Hack 60. Search the Internet from Visual Studio

Visual Studio's help searches can extend well beyond the boundaries of the IDE and your hard drive. Learn how to make it consult online sources of wisdom.

The Internet has become an indispensable tool when researching programming tasks. If you have ever tried programming on a disconnected machine, you will quickly realize how frustrating it can be when valuable tools like MSDN Online and Google are not available. The Visual Studio team has released a power toy called VSOnlineSearch that allows you to search the Internet from directly inside the text editor, passing whatever text you have selected to the search engine of your choice.

The first step to using this power toy is to download the tool from http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/ide and then install the tool using either the .msi or .exe file included in the .zip file. Once you have installed the add-in, you will find a new menu available when you right-click in the editor, which is shown in Figure 7-11.

To use this power toy, you should first select a piece of text in the text editor and then right-click and select the search engine you would like to search. The power toy will then pass the selected text to the search engine you chose and open the page in the built-in browser, as shown in Figure 7-12.

Because the source is also available online (follow the same link as before), you could add your own searches to the menu if you were so inclined. (I would love to see a Google groups search item.) The VSOnlineSearch power toy is simple to install, easy to use, and makes it very easy to search for something without leaving the IDE.