Code Library

IntelliSense received improvements in Visual Studio 2010. Visual Studio evaluates what you type against the Pascal interpretation of appropriate symbols, similar to the Pascal interpretation in the Navigate To dialog, narrowing IntelliSense options. This allows you to find things quickly where you remember only part of the symbol, generally the relevant portion, ignoring any preceding words like “Is” or “Allow.” The abbreviations let you quickly enter the symbols you frequently use. IntelliSense is now filtered for the current target platform—Microsoft .NET Framework 4 features won’t appear in IntelliSense of a project targeting Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.

Previous versions of IntelliSense were awkward in a test-driven development (TDD) environment where the symbols do not yet exist. IntelliSense could be quite pushy, requiring frequent presses on the Esc key. Visual Studio 2010 offers a second mode for IntelliSense mode called suggestion mode. This mode assumes you may or may not be entering an existing symbol. The top of the suggestion mode IntelliSense box displays what will be entered if you close IntelliSense. You can use arrow keys or the mouse to select an existing item, or enter your text as written without IntelliSense interference:

Visual Studio 2010 also provides TDD support through the Generate from Usage features. If you call to code that has not been created, you’ll get a compiler error because the symbol is not found. The error correction dialog now includes Generate from Usage options. The specific options available are based on the context. If it looks like a method, property or field, appropriate options are displayed. If it looks like a type, available options are creating a new class or a new type. Creating a new class will create a new file in your current project with an empty class using the symbol name. Creating a new type displays a dialog with many options for how the new type is created, including the project where it’s located. There are numerous improvements to debugging across all versions, but I think debugging deserves a future column to itself.

Source of Information : Visual Studio Magazine August 2010