Code Library

Stop by the Fonts and Colors dialog, particularly if you do presentations. The default for selected text is difficult for some people to read, especially on some projectors. You can change this in any version of Visual Studio by selecting Text Editor/Selected Text and choosing black on a pale background such as yellow or a custom color. My eyes appreciate increasing the size of the small fonts used by default in tool windows and IntelliSense.

The Keyboard tab allows powerful personalization of your experience. You can set keystrokes for your favorite features, remap the keystrokes that you have trouble remembering, or map keystrokes to macros for truly custom behavior. You can also use the search feature of the keyboard dialog to see if a particular command is already mapped to a standard key in your keyboard layout. The keyboard-mapping page even allows exploration of what commands are available inside Visual Studio. A major improvement in Visual Studio 2010 is that right-click context menus now display mapped keystrokes.

If you’re a Visual Basic developer, consider how you want Ctl-Y to behave. The Visual Basic keyboard mapping retains the historic Cut Line behavior. However, programs from Office to Finale Notepad use Ctl-Y as the shortcut for Redo. With such a drastic difference in meaning, you might want to remap this key.

Other helpful settings in Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 2008 include line numbers, save a new project when it’s created, open .XAML files in XAML View to avoid the designer delay, redirect debugger output to the Immediate window, or quiet the warning when files are modified outside the IDE by Expression Blend or external generation. Visual Basic programmers may want to select Option Strict for new projects to create a strongly typed experience by default.

In Visual Studio 2010 you can insert new tabs to the right of existing tabs for more consistency with programs like Internet Explorer. If you don’t like something that’s new in 2010, you can probably turn it off. Look for a “Show All Settings” checkbox at the bottom of the Options dialog if you chose Visual Basic as your development style. You can adjust your settings with confidence because if you mess things up entirely, you can reset it all in the Import/Export settings tab. You can also export settings for specific environments like pairing.

Source of Information : Visual Studio Magazine August 2010