VS 2010 Highlighted References

VS 2010 IDE has a new feature where it "highlights" all other instances of a class member.

For example, in the image below I have Deposit function being called multiple times and when I select (by double-click) one instance of it, what this new feature of VS 2010 does is; it highlights (in gray color) all other instances of the selected member in the same file. Like shown in the image below.

Once you have multiple instsances of a member highlighted you can navigate through them by Ctrl+Shift+ Up arrow or Ctrl+Shift+Down arrow.

VS 2010 Code Editor's Zoom feature

How many times you encountered a situation when you need to change the screen resolution or text size to make you code to appear in larger font. I encountered couple of time and instances especially when disusing something with team and people sitting far can't see the code statements at all, in presentations etc.

The solution has been an easy approach, change resolution or change the font size from Tools --> Options. What appeared tedious to me was re-setting either one of these after the purpose is over.

VS 2010 Code Editor comes up with this new feature where you can just simply ZOOM your entire code editor view without changing resolution or text size.
To do so it’s a well known trick "Hold Left-click and scroll the Mouse Wheel."

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VS 2010 Transact-SQL Editor's backward compatibility

VS2010 IDE provides a new menu named Data and it has a brand new feature item "Transact-SQL Editor" this feature allows you to perform the db operations without leaving the VS development environment.
* Microsoft's another step forward to make it a real IDE (Integrated Development Environment).


Read more about this feature on previous post: http://dotnetpassion.blogspot.com/2009/12/vs-2010-ide-integration-with-sql-2008-t.html

SQL 2008 is the main candidate which gets the privilege to provide db service to this new Data menu of VS2010, and so SQL 2008 express is part of VS2010 installation. Whereas this new Transact-SQL Editor is capable enough to connect to SQL 2005 instance as well. When it prompts for connection, by default it pulls SQL 2008 instance name (SQLExpress), you can choose "Browse for more" option and then expand the "Database Engine" node and select the SQL 2005 instance.

Now you are good to go and do your db work with SQL Server 2005 from VS 2010 IDE.

Upgrade path - VS 2008 to VS2010

Microsoft will be providing an ability to upgrade exiting VS2008 environment into VS2010.

Whereas, it is also possible to have various VS (2005, 2008 and 2010) installtions to be available and run on the same machine.

For VS 2010 Beta users, Microsoft is also providing an upgrade path to be upgraded into VS 2010 final vesrion rather than doing a fresh and clean install.