Datasheet

example, when you compile an application, the IDE sends messages here to tell you what it is doing and
whether it succeeded.
The following sections describe the major pieces of the IDE in more detail.
Menus
The IDE’s menus contain standard Visual Studio commands. These are generally commands that manip-
ulate the project and the modules it contains. Some of the concepts are similar to those used by any
Windows application (File\New, File\Save, Help\Contents), but many of the details are specific to
Visual Studio programming, so the following sections describe them in a bit more detail.
The menus are customizable, so you can add, remove, and rearrange the menus and the items they con-
tain. This can be quite confusing, however, if you later need to find a command that you have removed
from its normal place in the menus. Some developers place extra commands in standard menus, particu-
larly the Tools menu, but it is generally risky to remove standard menu items. Usually it is safest to leave
the standard menus alone and make custom toolbars to hold customizations. For more information on
this, see the section “Customize” later in this chapter.
Many of the menus’ most useful commands are also available in other ways. Many provide shortcut key
combinations that make using them quick and easy. For example, Ctrl-N opens the New Project dialog
just as if you had selected the File\New Project menu command. If you find yourself using the same
command very frequently, look in the menu and learn its keyboard shortcut to save time later.
Many menu commands are also available in standard toolbars. For example, the Debug toolbar contains
many of the same commands that are in the Debug menu. If you use a set of menu commands fre-
quently, you may want to display the corresponding toolbar to make using the commands easier.
Visual Studio also provides many commands through context menus. For example, if you right-click on
a project in the Solution Explorer, the context menu includes an Add Reference command that displays
the Add Reference dialog just as if you had invoked Project\Add Reference. Often it is easier to find a
command by right-clicking an object related to whatever you want to do than it is to wander through
the menus.
The following sections describe the general layout of the standard menus. You might want to open the
menus in Visual Studio as you read these sections, so you can follow along.
Note that Visual Studio displays different menus and different commands in menus depending on what
editor is active. For example, when you have a form open in the form editor, Visual Studio displays a
Format menu that you can use to arrange controls on the form. When you have a code editor open, the
Format menu is hidden because it doesn’t apply to code.
File
The File menu, shown in Figure 1-2, contains commands that deal with creating, opening, saving, and
closing projects and project files.
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IDE
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