10 Time-Saving Tips in Visual Studio 2022 (with Tim Corey)

hey everyone my name is Celia I'm a
product manager on the visual studio
team and I'm really excited to be joined
here today by the amazing Tim Curry Tim
is an amazing educator that has helped
millions of students through his YouTube
channel and training courses learn all
about Visual Studio C sharp and so many
other Technologies hi Tim I'm really
excited to have you here
thanks for having me
so in this video we're hoping that we'll
walk you through some of our favorite
features that been introduced in the
latest versions of Visual Studio 2022 if
you update to 17.7 you'll have access to
all the features we'll be talking about
in this video Tim go ahead and take it
away okay so here we have Visual Studio
we have the release notes up for 17.7
what's going on there's a lot of great
stuff in here if you ever lose this by
the way
um I have updated before I've seen this
and I've closed it out and then went
wait what was in there
um under the help menu
you can say uh what's new it will bring
this back up so lots of great stuff in
here yeah I love this view
um if you ever want to know more about
the features you can actually click on
those tiles so for example that copy and
term indentation one is one I worked on
and in here you can kind of figure out
what is this feature about in this case
we just simply made it so that next time
you copy and paste some code you don't
have to fix indentation manually it's
automatically going to be done for you
so if you ever want to learn more about
a feature that you see there by the way
the tiles are selectable and sometimes
if you have to enable the feature you'll
see an enabled button at the very top
that lets you do it really easily
um so definitely interact with this page
and
urinal standpoint I love this feature it
seems so simple and yet
um can't tell you how many times I've
I've messed around with stuff like this
so it's it's definitely huge for me at
least
um so yeah so this is a great you know
overview what's going on and then like
you said you can you can jump into any
of these things another great feature
we're gonna look at this one today
um with file comparison but you can look
at these get more information turn
things on it's a it's a great place okay
so today we're getting something a
little bit different
um
instead of saying file new project we're
going to go to an existing repository
and the repository we chose is Orchard
CMS or Orchard core and we're going to
grab this repository and clone it down
so I'm going to copy this we'll talk
more about this in a minute once I
actually clone it because it's going to
take a little bit to clone down but
let's copy the URL for cloning but
instead of going over to like you know
terminal and saying git clone and then
open up a solution afterwards you can
just say clone Repository
paste in your uh your path here I'll
give a different path
there we go
and hit clone and that's going to pull
everything down you can do the
background but I'm going to do in the
foreground so you can see you know just
how many megabytes worth of stuff it's
downloading there's tons of stuff in
this repository but this also gives us
kind of a good picture of even the large
projects Visual Studio is pretty
performance when it comes to you know
loading them in which this is just
download speed this is my internet
um trying to bog down getting 200 plus
megabytes of stuff and then extracting
it
um but also how performant Visual Studio
is it loading this stuff up and getting
intellisense and telecode and all that
stuff running pretty quickly so there's
204 projects in here that's pretty
impressive yeah we're always making
adjustments and improvements in the
performance area so you'll notice with
all the different release notes a lot of
times you'll see those different
performance improvements we just did
some improvements in the finding files
area because we know that's a really
critical function in the editor so we're
definitely always making improvements as
much as we can so keep those feedback
suggestions coming
excellent
um and you know this is the first place
I want to talk about because it's a
solution View and the solution view has
been pre-limiting at times you know I
I've grown up with visual studio so my
first Visual Studio was for Visual Basic
before I believe
um yeah originally before
vb6b4.net even came around
um oops let's go ahead and repin that
um but you know I've had it for a while
one of the things that has always been
kind of a limit is that solution view
where there's files in there that aren't
really a part of the of the projects but
you still want to see them and I love
the fact we now have this solution items
folder inside here let's see the gulp
file package.json and the readme
so I can open this up and actually see
the readme
um and what's in this this package
one point go ahead oh go ahead I want to
point out that this is not a great view
to read the readme this is markdown but
it's um not a great view so you can go
to preview now
and actually see the the produced
version of this and read very easily
what's what's in here
yeah and and my team added support for
the markdown
um view here and because a lot of folks
wanted something where you can preview
these options but also
being able to have access to the editor
features in the editor window so for
example if you go Tim to the left there
and maybe you want to switch your Visual
Studio section from bullets to maybe a
list you could use the shift alt select
and select the three lines
and then you can edit it all together so
if you delete that and put the one dot
now it's turned into a list on the right
there
um so just the same editor features
you're used to but now you can do it in
markdown files as well
excellent yeah I like to be able to do
things quickly that's kind of the point
of this video but also the point of as
developers we don't want to spend a ton
of time
working with the tools we want to get
the job done and so be able to be quick
on this stuff is really great I'm going
to save that we're going to go ahead and
contribute that later
so
um so now we have you know we have our
solution open we want to look at you
know what's in here and how you find
stuff so there's there's some new stuff
with find isn't there
yes we have a new uh search feature
called All in One search that we're
really really excited about
um you used to have the search you know
come up in the at the top
um and all your files there but now we
have a new view called all-in-one search
that you can access using the same
shortcuts because we didn't want to you
know muscle memory and all we didn't
want to mess with that but we you could
access it using Ctrl T if you want to
search for code
and you can just search for what you
have and some of my favorite things
about this is that you get a preview
panel now so for example a lot of times
if I have this you know repo and I'm
curious about the program.cs file in my
repo I searched for that and I like to
browse through the file like I just kind
of browse through and see which one
should I actually be paying attention to
because there's a few here and I'm like
all right which one should I actually go
into and go and uh look at
so I I love the ability to prove you fun
fact we used to have the preview panel
on the right side and then people were
like well I want to see more of that
horizontal space so we've switched it
but you can still toggle it at the top
right if you want to try that Tim
there you go
I like options
which one do you prefer
so probably a personal I
so this would work well but I can't see
where it is
in program.cs I'm like we've got six or
seven of them
um that's hard to see so I think for me
personally I would probably do the do
the bottom search uh or bottom results
because I can see the whole path and go
okay like this is hard you know it's
orchardcore.cms.web versus
orchardcore.mvc.web it says it's just a
little bit of difference here
um but being able to see that and go
okay that's what I want and then double
click and go right to it
is super helpful I love it and we can
show you how to enable that because
we're gradually rolling it out if you
want to enable it then it's not enabled
for you you can go to actually let's do
all in one search we can use that so
instead of code search which is Ctrl T
we'll do control Q which is perfect
opens up feature search you can search
for all in one
there we go top one yes and then if you
open that up then you'll see it under
your preview features and if you scroll
down
here we go new Visual Studio search
experience exactly so you can enable it
and restart and then you'll see the new
search experience
excellent and while you're here under
the environment there's preview features
there's a lot of other things in here
you can check out to see if maybe it
fits in your organization to do this or
maybe you want to get ahead of the curve
and kind of get some of these new
features and test them out these are
preview features which means they might
break
but or they might change or they might
change
um but but they are some there's some
pretty awesome stuff and as you can see
I think I have most of them checked so
um so yeah I I use pretty much all of
them just to try them out we we really
love the feedback we get when we have
things in preview
um for example for the compare
experience that we're going to show here
in a minute we got a lot of great
feedback when we were iterating on it
and that has been immensely useful so
folks if you know we love it when you
all try the preview features and give us
that feedback so please keep that coming
absolutely I do want to kind of give a
plug here because
you know these things don't just happen
because you decide that's what you want
it's because you decide that's what we
want based upon what we say and so built
right into Visual Studio this little
icon in the far right hand corner send
feedback
where you can report a problem or
suggest a feature one of the things that
I have found is
um you know
there are times and we're all guilty of
this where we kind of grumble and
complain you know pick rocks at
something because we're irritated about
something but until you take that step
of actually doing something about it
you're just whining you know and so
being able to say okay I have a problem
let's go ahead and report that because
that gives Microsoft the ability you
know Dahlia specifically the ability to
go in there and look and say oh I can
fix that problem or maybe it's a person
like a a per computer problem or
something like that but report a problem
is great but also suggest a feature
so if you want something
suggest that feature two of the features
that uh our team worked on is based on
highly voted suggested feature because
we that communicates to us that a lot of
people are gonna be helped from
implementing that feature
um so we we love it when we see so much
Community engagement and kind of a
direction of what the community really
wants
I think I saw somewhere I'm not sure if
it was the um under what's new or if it
was it wasn't here
um maybe it's in the release notes for
17-7 but they had a list of
you know this had so many people
upvoting this and this had so many
people upvoting it and that's why it's
in this update
um so yeah they can't do everything you
know you're you're not superhuman but
you know as much as possible yeah you
try
um but as much as possible the feedback
drives the product
so yeah great stuff
so while we're navigating this Library
there's gonna be things that come up
that we just don't know because this is
the first time we're in the in this
library and that's a pretty common thing
to have happen right either you're
working a new a new system or a new
application or you just get hired at a
company and you're trying to figure
stuff out so one of the things I
discovered in here is if we go to email
um email address validator
I found this
um this email address validator it uses
mime kit which I might not be familiar
with and it seems pretty simple if we
look at this we can probably read okay
it's take looking for the at symbol
which if you've known anything about
email address validation that's pretty
much all you can do to validate email
addresses say does it have an at symbol
otherwise you know sure but
um we have some stuff in here that you
know might not be something we're
familiar with such as email address dot
triparts but if you Mouse over this a
really cool newer feature is we have
right down here GitHub examples and
documentation so I just moused over this
and it's like hey you want to see what
people are doing to make this work
and here we go
so there's examples of other people
doing this in their code and how they
implemented this mailbox uh or mailbox
address dot triparts that's pretty
pretty impressive
you're also notice that at the top
um you can see all the different
overloads so you got the overloads here
um and you can try different ones while
we're
here nice
all right so
um so while we're in here let's also
talk about kind of figuring out stuff
that maybe you don't understand and you
need more information on like this try
parse here we can hit F12 and go to it
and this is in mind kit which is not
part of this project It's actually an
external library but but you know what
is it so let's actually go to the very
top here
and we're in the namespace mind kit and
I'm gonna go you know what alt slash I
use the keyboard shortcut and we'll say
We'll ask copilot which that's looking
at the entire class now
what does this do
yeah that pink on the left kind of gives
you a hint of what context it's looking
at when you're asking a question so I
like to pay attention to that to figure
out hey do I want to go maybe further
into a method or outside the method
um so it's really helpful to you know
pay attention to that pink on the left
yeah that's definitely helpful for
seeing what exactly it's kind of
processing and thinking about
um so this is a mailbox address which
inherits from an internet address it
explains more about about how this thing
works which is really impressive just to
understand what's going on but some
really cool stuff down here there's some
additional suggestions so it's like okay
here's the information you're probably
looking for but maybe what's the next
step in this process now you can ask
anything you want you know
um is this a popular library or you know
some of that you could ask at that but
it's saying hey what other classes
inherit from internet address how is
this class relate to mine and so many
other things and just you know if we
select how it's related to mine it's
going to talk more about how this
relates to mine so really good stuff
here to kind of go even deeper and even
help coach you on what you might want to
know more of next I find that it does
really well when it's summarizing a long
list of information whether that's code
or whatever and then generating
something out of it so I often use it to
say like what is this thing like
concisely or like generate docs because
if you think about it it's basically
reading everything in the class or
everything in the code and summarizing
it in a few sentences which is what Doc
is and it does really well in that case
as well
one that the fun thing I saw recently
that did was I asked it to explain like
explaining like I'm a five-year-old what
does this thing do and explain it in
Lego terms which is just awesome that it
was actually really good explanation and
yet broke it down into Super simplistic
you know talk like I'm five because
sometimes I need that so some really
creative stuff you can do with GitHub
besides just documentation and break
unit tests and all the other stuff they
can do for you
sorry cool stuff
all right so while we're here I kind of
want to show off something that came out
recently that I have enabled
um which I have a question for you we're
going to look at talk about the
um the different curly brace
colorization so you have the yellow one
here then the pink one here
um can be a little bit more difficult if
you are colorblind but we'll get to that
in just a minute but this came out in
17.6 I believe now
um is this something that gets turned on
by default we have to turn this on
that's a great question right now it's
not enabled by default so you have to
enable it but if we're planning on
hopefully turning this on by default but
let's show folks how to turn it on and
off just in case they don't want to see
it so if you see that let's go back to
the control Q shortcut because I love
accessing features from that and if you
look for brace colorization
my little brace pair colorization
perfect
there we go yes and if you scroll down
it's right there enable brace pair
colorization
right there cool
now that does raise the question though
what happens if I'm colorblind I can't
see red green or another pair of colors
am I just out of luck or no you can
actually customize the colors and uh
accessibility is a big reason we added
the customization feature
um so if you go to the font
so if you go to search and look at the
fonts menu
yes fonts and colors I love it search by
the way
I love it too and then if you scroll
down a little bit
you'll see brace matching level one two
and three because we repeat after three
colors so if if you want to teach that
go ahead I actually ended up uh getting
a lot of comments on our choice of
colors uh a lot of people have a lot of
opinions about what colors they want to
see so you have opinions feel free to
adjust this all you want and it'll apply
the setting and that's the color that
you're gonna see with your brace
colorization awesome I like options
um so brace causations I really
appreciate it I
I'm usually deep into something I can't
figure out where I'm at and that's um
that's really helpful but the other
thing that I've got turned on
um again we'll talk about if it turn on
my default but sticky scroll is another
thing that I'm showing off right here
um right now I can see even though I'm
I'm kind of in this this if statement
here I can see that I'm inside of an if
statement instead of a set inside of
public string address inside of the
class inside the namespace so you can
kind of see where I'm at in this really
long I mean we're this right here let's
just go to the end
um we're talking 14 1500 lines of of
code and yet I can tell in the middle of
it
kind of where I'm at in this whole
structure of things
um so that's sticky scroll where it kind
of sticks to the top
I I want to point uh point out a couple
of things here so we hear a lot of
people say this is a really important
real estate and I don't want sticky
scroll to take up so much space so you
can actually customize it uh when you
enable it to say I just want three lines
so if we go back to our feature search
or tools options and we go to Sticky
and if you go up a bit
I'm on sticky scroll and the maximum I'm
zoomed into my text here this is one of
those things I have been talking to
people about and they're working on
um but notice it cuts off but right here
that's five lines what I've got and I
can prefer outer Scopes or interscopes
I love that one as well because we
recently added it if you don't want the
outer scope like the namespace and all
the stuff that you already know about at
the top and you want the inner scope you
can switch that I have it actually on
the inner Scopes uh settings and as you
are coding like maybe you're in a while
loop you can see that you're in a while
loop and that is really helpful for me I
think I saw that in here somewhere I was
I was deep enough
it's I probably lost it but
but yeah so that would drop off if I
have five it's gonna drop off
on the sixth one the sixth one would go
on and the namespace would go off that's
exactly inner and outer is the sixth one
doesn't show up in that list we always
get namespace through number five
so or three or two whatever you want to
choose for your your level of
indentation but
um yeah that that's a okay so let's be
honest here
um as developers we're supposed to write
short methods and say a short classes
that are really easy to maintain update
and
we don't we have four thousand line
class files that have you know the
everything all in one junk drawer of of
stuff and this is really helpful so so
yeah this is you know me personally I
like this feature
um even though I try to violate the
put everything in one class um that's
really helpful
so while we're here
um let's talk about you know one of the
things I kind of ignore a lot but
there's these like different colors on
the side what do they mean
that's a great question so this is
something I recently dug into because we
were trying to answer some questions
those colors you see on the scroll bar
actually means something so on the very
far uh left side for example you'll see
anything to do with Version Control so
if you make a change in this file right
now
in a file that actually is in Version
Control that was in the mind kit yeah
um let's go ahead and let's just put a
class here
um
public class or yeah public class
Tim because you know
gotta make my mark
and you can already see it on the right
here do you see how there's like a green
uh over here yes and it's empty now if
you say we'll switch to uh green all the
way
and it tells you
this is a tracked file I've just added
something new and now it's deep green if
you remove something if you remove maybe
the class that's up above it you'll see
it show up in red
um or blue blue also means changed or
modified and then if you save it it'll
go deep and that's like Version Control
but it not only is the left side means
something but also the middle and the
right side so on the right side you'll
see any errors so if you introduce an
error right now you'll see a small
little red box that will show up so
let's let's undo that and then let's
just start putting in some errors down
here I'll create a Constructor
[Music]
um
a hard time writing errors intentionally
right you know like
um how about this try to do a find and
replace and do something awful like put
in null
oh
so Ctrl H is the find and replace
shortcut by the way
and if you do like find yeah email and
like put in now let's just break it
there's illusion current project current
project
so you'll notice now you have a red on
the right side here
but you don't have the change yes and
you'll also notice that when you did the
find it'll annotate that in the middle
of the scroll bar so if you try to find
for example
um add
you'll notice that there's a DOT exactly
so any fine matches will show up there
um any bookmarks or break points if you
add a breakpoint they'll show up there
and you can also customize these Colors
by the way so if you go to that same
menu let's start let's not show it right
now but if you go through the same menu
of fonts and colors you can customize
all the colors so just think about the
tip that if you if you always ignore it
that's okay but if you're all any if
you're curious at all you'll notice that
scroll bar will also give you a hint on
what you just did excellent now there's
other ways of setting up your scroll bar
I believe there's a thing called map
mode I'm going to talk about that and
what we can do with map mode yes so if
we go to our favorite control queue now
and you switch to
search for map mode
use scroll map mode yeah
and I'll come up with this menu so if
you switch the behavior to use the yes
mode for vertical scroll bar and click
ok
and I see a lot of people have using
this for very long classes where you'll
notice a scroll bar switch so now you
see an outline of your class and if you
hover over you can see a preview of what
you're on if we go back to maybe a
longer class
so let's go into our triparts again even
though we don't control it
there's there's a lot of stuff in here
and it's really useful when you're
navigating and maybe you're writing code
at the top of a class and you see
something going wrong at the bottom of
the class you can use the combination of
the annotations to get a hint of okay
what's going on over there I still want
to write where I'm writing but I want to
just get a preview of down below the
class at the bottom what's going on
there so that's useful for that if you
like that kind of Mac mode excellent
that can be really helpful
so let's talk now we've kind of gone
over you know browsing through your
stuff and but now we're maybe at a point
here I'm already starting to make some
changes but I'm kind of a point where I
want to add some stuff and you know one
of the new features I really like and
let's let's close out all the stuff that
I've broken
um we'll leave that for a senior
developer to take care of
um but let's just say that I wanted to
add something new in this email folder
or somewhere else
um I really like the new shortcut we
have Ctrl shift a I believe yes um to
bring up the file new items um I
actually did a whole video just on this
because of all the different stuff you
can do in here but
um other thing really helpful for you
know if we did something like I don't
know
um email clients
like dot CS but I also want to have the
interface for it I want to create it now
um you know I can put a comma and say I
email client
dot CS
and then it will add this right to the
path it's at
so
there's our email client and I email
client
um the really cool thing is this is an
internal class email client it says okay
you want a DOT CS file right but this
one is an internal interface because you
started with the convention of capital I
so that's that's super awesome to really
get quickly into creating new new stuff
so that that's a um a nice new feature
we've we've added or they've had you've
added I'm sure it's not me I keep saying
they and we and you know I'm taking full
credit for everything that's right in
Visual Studio everything is wrong go to
report a problem no problem that's
that's how I roll you know so love it
but yeah
um great new feature so and and I love
that you opened up the two files and
kind of like struggled to see the
differences I think that is a great
segue to the new compare option
so if you want to compare the two files
you would select the two
yeah right click this is uh one of the
highest voted suggestion feature
suggestion tickets that we got and it
was hey could you just add a way for us
to compare two files in solution
Explorer and we're like yes that's
totally reasonable we should do that
yeah
so now you can just see it side by side
and all you needed to do is hold Ctrl
select the two files you want to compare
and click on compare selected excellent
a file comparison is something that you
kind of take for granted but at the same
time it's always been like bring a third
party tool in or you know and yet we
have it for like git we have to have
file comparison all the time it's
already kind of there but not and so
this is a really nice addition but you
can't just it's not just you can compare
two files you can also right click on
one of your files and say compare
selected whoops I've got both selected
still
let's try this again so if I compare
this I can right click and say compare
with
and then find something else on disk now
that's totally different but I can
compare from a file on disk and find
something maybe a different project
that's it's close you know one of the
things I do a lot is I'll have data
access it's pretty close from one
project to the next and I can compare
from one project to a totally different
solution somewhere else on disk and say
hey what did I change here they want to
bring those changes back to the original
so yeah really cool feature
love it
all right so so yeah that's that's a
bunch of features we've covered I think
nine features so far plus a couple of
bonuses along the way
um but one of the ones that kind of gets
lost in the kind of shuffle a lot and
it's been there for
years I think is code cleanup
um so let's talk more about code cleanup
and you know what is that and how does
it work
I love that because it's we
we keep wanting folks to not have to
format files manually
um we know it's tedious we notice a lot
of work so we keep making improvements
to how do you automatically format or
how do you automatically clean up your
files so there's this small little room
that keeps getting overlooked and I I
think we need to like have you know a
giant little box or kind of have it pop
up that allows you to clean up your code
so if you hover over there down below
so icon right down down here yes
you can actually configure code cleanup
and you can run code cleanup so the way
you can do that is not only can you do
it from this broom but you can use the
control K control e shortcut so if you
click on configure cleanup and you're
curious about some of the rules that we
apply every time you clean up we'll
format the document we'll remove
unnecessary Imports all these stuff that
you can not have to manually do and
you'll get that if you do Ctrl K Ctrl e
or click on that broom
okay
um let's let's just do that first so
let's click on the broom and run this
I've I've intentionally indented this
wrong we have using statements up here
or using directives I'm sorry that are
you know incorrect or not needed so
let's just click on the Broom
problem solved
I I love that so much and in my own
Visual Studio I have it actually run on
Save let's do that
um so I have found that just coming here
and
searching
super helpful there we go so we can
select profile one or profile two and
then say check the box run code cleanup
profile on save so if we were to back
this stuff out of here
and then let's just create another
property here sure that was that was
GitHub cop
they just suggested the last name I
believe
there's a little bit of a a really cool
thing but it's also a little bit of a
um
you're not sure who would give the
credit to so just create a visual studio
I guess but it's either intellicode or
it's GitHub copot and it kind of
dovetail on each other and and both do
some work there but we now have a change
we're going to save this file I'll hit
Ctrl s to save this file
and cleanup is done so yes so really
awesome picture highly recommend turning
it on
um if if you have your own settings
for your repo you can go to your editor
config file adjust the settings there
um you don't have to stick with the
defaults feel free to customize it all
you want I've seen different repos use
different editor config where the team
agrees on which you know indentation and
all those stuff they check it in to get
and then after they do the code cleanup
on save it automatically formats it for
you so if you ever find yourself in the
future doing any formatting manually
think about using Code cleanup and as I
brought this up because there's a lot of
available fixes in here that you can
look through and just add
yes you can add this up remove
unnecessary casts well that'd be great
probably maybe you know so it's up to
you if you want to do that or not
um the the included fixes by default are
kind of the safe ones
you know remove unnecessary casts might
actually change your code which is
pretty fine I mean or it could be kind
of scary for you so that's why
um these are different options and you
can just decide I'll put that in profile
two I'll run profile one on Save but I
can run profile two and see what changes
Again by watching what changes in this
right hand side scroll bar with a
different color and say okay these are
the changes that happened and kind of
scroll to them so so really good stuff
there and that's again been in visual
studio for ever seemingly um it's been a
long time
um but it's one of those things that
gets overlooked because it's just a
little icon at the bottom that gets
ignored and we keep updating those rules
and you know that you see on those
different profiles and the different
language teams add items in there all
the time so definitely check that out
excellent so that's been 10 plus things
in Visual Studio kind of make you a um a
faster developer which is you know
there's a lot of stuff baked in here I
keep telling people that when you start
using visual studio you're using just a
little percentage of the overall power
of it definitely learn more and more
about your editor learn more and more
about what it can do because our goal is
not to spend time tinkering our goal is
to to write good code and focus as much
time as possible on doing that and using
these tools can really help you speed up
your process and make sure that you know
you get the job done faster
so so yeah thanks for all the all the
new updates 17.7 is out now I appreciate
the you know the listing the community
and and making some of those great
changes in it
uh we we love hearing from the community
and I am so so appreciative that you
came on with us and showed these
features from your perspective because
we love hearing it from our users
perspective too like what do you love
like what are the things that are making
your job more difficult how can we make
that better our goal is to really help
developers be more and more productive
so that they focus on more of the coding
and less of the tedious work
um so keep that feedback coming we love
having it and thank you so much Tim for
coming and joining me excellent thanks
for having me