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Visual Studio 2015: Getting familiar with IDE features

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IDE Features

Feedback

You might never observed but there is a feedback icon on the top right corner of your visual studio main page .For convenience I have shown it below

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bZiSsMwUkV4/VrHHYVutYWI/AAAAAAAAACQ/tfhQYPOjysI/s1600/feedback.PNG

 

On clicking this icon you will get for options as you can see below:

 

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Lets explore them one by one and see what they can do

Report a problem: Whenever you have a an exception or error in your code or any other problem occurring in visual studio ,you van simply go to this and write about your problem. You will surely get a solution of your problem from some experts.

Provide suggestion: If you think that you have a good suggestion about visual studio then go here and write about it .

Rate this product :  If you want to rate visual studio, you can go here

Settings : This just allow you to select whether you want to participate in visual studio improvement program or not .

Notification

There is another icon of notification at the top right corner of visual studio 2015.

 https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GOOvU9dWE4k/VrHIcwNLrgI/AAAAAAAAAC0/lRVapk_h-64/s320/noti.PNG

 

This notification system alerts you about :

  • An update for a component of visual studio
  • An environment you might be interested in
  • An update itself in visual studio

These notifications have a 30 days expiry duration.

Quick launch

Just next to feedback you will find a textbox :

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this search box is for searching quickly in menus , options , open documents , most recently uses and NuGet packages. To search in these categories follow the shortcut @category name

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Scroll bar

With the scroll bar in visual studio you cannot only scroll on the window but it also gives some information like

Cursor position : A blue line in scroll bar shows the position of the cursor

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Oxg_Hmvz1Vk/VrHKE1jhKgI/AAAAAAAAADk/XCHxMcXxUf8/s400/Capture.PNG 

 

Errors : Red dots on scroll bar indicates that in which areas of the code there are some errors

 

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Unused variables : Another thing that scroll bar in VS can represent is the part of the code where any unused variable exists . you will find green dots on scroll bar representing such areas .

Task List

It helps you to create a list of programming tasks . To add a task in the task list you have to use TODO and UNDONE keywords .

TODO represents the  task to be done  and UNDONE represent the task which is left incomplete.

For example:  // TODO load state from previously suspended application

It will appear in task list as

 

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