Awsome tool! But the tooltip is awful in VB.NET, and is easier to use VS original tooltip for VB projects.
****** Update ****** Thanks for the update! it's gust great! I raised my vote to 5!! Thanks for making the classes browsable in the sln exp. like eclipse, I replaced it with the old Solution-Explorer for good! I think many ppl will reconsider getting VS just because of this project, no question about it!
Here is a few more suggestions:
- Make different symbols for private/public/abstract/sealed etc. members, class/structure/enum/delegate/interface/event/static class/module should have different signs as well in both VB and C#.
- Specific coloring for namespace/struct/enum/module/delegate/interface/delegate/user type/event/method names, for both VB and C# (should all be customizable from the "Font and Color" options for both VB and C#).
- Local variables should appear bold, static (vb: shared) members should be italic.
- An intellisense items filter for all code types like Karl Shifflett's xaml intellisense filter.
The latest version (10.0.10819.19 as of writing this) has introduced some kind of memory leak or endless loop, which the former version did not have.
The result is that Visual Studio 2010 when started just locks up, until all memory resources on my machine are used, and then crashes. This behaviour disappears as soon as I delete the extension from the "~\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Extensions\Microsoft" directory.
Is there any way to get the older version 10.0.107xx.xx as I never experienced this problem before?
Otherwise a fantastic tool, that I hope to be able to install again in the near future
I like just about everything in this, except the document well. While I can see how it is useful, it is too 'invasive', uses hideous gradients, and even worst doesn't stay disabled. The frequent updates require frequent disabling. The document well pulls this extension down to 2 stars from what would be 5.
If you want to enhance your productivity don't use this extension.
Some useful functionalities but lots of setting changes need a restart just to test the setting and you loose everything each month when the extension update.
There is just one little thing missing in the solution navigator, the "Show all files" button. This button is really useful when you add files from outside of Visual Studio. It is the only thing I still have to use the Solution Explorer for, which is kind of annoying...
However everytime I upgrade to a new release, I lose my settings: - CTRL+click to navigate - Highlight the current line are both turned back to ON (I usually work with the OFF value for these settings).
Thanks so much for adding revision history. One feature I would like is item tracking in the Solution Navigator like Solution Explorer has. I have completely replaced SE with SN. Excellent work!
My favorites are the searchable "Add Reference" interface, the Solution Navigator, and the ability to pin document tabs.
Like others, I've experienced some pretty frustrating stability issues, but I'm not willing to uninstall just yet. Hopefully they'll get the stability issues resolved and this will continue to deliver added value, but without the added cost.
CopyToHTML doesn't work properly as it doesn't take into account line breaks in the code, didn't MSFT test this before letting it out the door? Also who needs giagantic Text labels on buttons, just give us a small icon or the options to configure. Move the CopyToHTML configurations to the Tool/Options support page.
See Example at this forums site where I used this tool to paste into the Rich Text Box there. http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vssetup/thread/4a589eff-6e96-40cf-bf8a-45782694205a
The information on this states: Then you can paste the code anywhere HTML is supported, such as Windows Live Writer: Not exactly as I tried pasting HTML in Word and Excel (2000) and it didn't work...
Like the "Tab Well" (Colorized Tabs) works perfect. Like the "SearchAble Add Reference" but start up times are way too slow for me to endure. "AutoBrace Completion" - No Big Deal CTL-Click "Go to Definition" How is this faster than Right Click -> Go to Denfintion?
The quality is very poor. Besides memory consumption that increased 3 times the IDE hangs/freezes every half an hour with "not responding" label. After uninstalling the tools I can now work fine.
The only thing lacking is the slow performance in big solutions, I think because of the SolutionNavigator, which is indeed the greatest toll in this extension.
So please hurry and get it fast and as areal replacement of the native solution explorer.
Since I didn't find a place to report bugs I mention it here:
In the Report Designer when you activate Expression window, the cursor has some strange actions. Press a Tab or do some typing and space bar press and then cursor is vanished.
It seems there is some conflicts between this tool and the Expression window.
Where we can file bugs for this? There's a bug with the new Add/Reference dialog which crashes on temporary projects (once these are saved, it proceeds OK):
System.ArgumentException: The path is not of a legal form. at System.IO.Path.NormalizePath(String path, Boolean fullCheck, Int32 maxPathLength) at System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(String path) at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AddReferenceDialog..ctor(IVsHierarchy projectHierarchy, DTE2 applicationObject) at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AddReferencePackage.ShowAddReferenceDialogOnIdle(IdleComponent idleComponent)
Horrible release. DO NOT INSTALL. Clearly this was not tested and is no longer worked on. crashes the 2010 IDE after 5 minutes. Real shame since there are some good features here.
I personally don't like the Ctrl+Click to go to definition, I like to use it to select a word.
All other features are simply awesome, all features are really good.
My only suggestion is: some improvement on the intelisense, more information, tabs to view only properties, fields, methods, ... I would love to see that.
This is a fabulous extension pack for VS2010. But I got some thoughts with it. 1. The 'Ctrl+Click Go To Definition' feature breaks my quickly double-click and ctrl+V action. 2. The 'Highlight Current Line' feature has not config option. (SlickEdit Gadgets did better) 3. The 'Column Guides' feature has not config option, and is not so easy to use. How about a dragable guideline? And the user can create a new guideline from the left edge, like Photoshop. 4. The 'Solution Navigator' feature has no multi-selection function, and it be would very nice if there is a separate line under the solution filter buttons.
Expecting new feature: Outlining for .js and .css file. Like http://jse.codeplex.com;
This is a wonderful set of tools, but I'm having trouble with the latest update. On a Web Site project, everytime I try to open ANY file, VS crashes. All plugins and other extensions are disabled. When I disable the Productivity ones, everything runs smoothly. This didn't happen before the latest update of these tools.
Nice idea, poor execution. Once installed my productivity went to ZERO. VS kept freezing! I wasn't able to diagnose much, other than it might have to do with there being web projects in the one solution that was causing me issues.
Crashes VS when adding a new project to a solution. Crashes VS when adding a new reference to a project. Crashes VS when adding a new file to a project.
Pretty much crashes every time i give it a mean look. The idea is good, but it obviously needs much better testing.
I liked the original (June 2010) version of the tool but each release is less and less useful to me. I'd rather stick with the older version.
The Add References dialog was awesome in the original but newer vers seem to be breaking it more and more. The current ver won't open because it says the path is not in a legal form. It would be nice if it would even bother telling me the path.
The On/Off buttons in options - why? Is this more intuitive than a checkbox? It might look cooler but I prefer workable.
After installing the newer versions (even after disabling the extension) my newline bracket options are broken. I can't reenable them for the life of me (haven't tried doing a full settings reset yet). Really, really frustrating as it slows down development a lot. I'm not 100% sure this is completely the addins fault but it seems like a strange coincidence.
I'd personally like to see the team put some extra time in QA/reliability work on the existing features before adding anything new. At this point I'm going to basically have to stop using it because the features I'm interested in don't work anymore.
I never knew how much I wanted the Highlight Current Line feature until this extension pack came out. Now I can't code without it! You could have picked a better default color (light green is my preferred), but thankfully you made it customizable. :-)
Side note: It is quite annoying that customizations (e.g. colors) are lost when the extensions are updated. Please try to find a way around that!
I have the same issue as Jon, the fact the add reference dialog box effectively ignores the assembly you select to add to a project actually makes it a liability to use. The solution navigator is nice, the layout of the preferences dialog annoys me as it just totally ignores Visual Studio convention in place of a few silly graphics.
Please correct the issues with the add reference dialog as the "newly improved" dialog in VS2010 is such a joke and leads to be screaming at my monitor every single day at its poor design.
The auto upgrade completely messed up the setting I had configured. The line edit highlight is extremely annoying. If you ask me there is not much POWER in this tool.. It should be called Band Tools with bells and off-key whistles.
Just upgraded to the latest version and still the problem with adding references is there. If you have the dll installed in the GAC, but browse to the file and add it like that it neglects to add in the hint path.
The rest of the suite could be brilliant, but this bug renders it unusable for me so it's disabled for now.
Amazing extension, the triple click, alignment and move lines up/down is very useful for me at the moment because my coding looks like my 5 yr old daughter wrote it lolz!, this will help me an enourmous amount and will clean up my code no end1
Nice stuff, but wow is it dog slow. My CPU usage was consistently around 40-50% when idle. Typing code in the C# editor window was painfully slow so I had to disable quite a few things. It's possible there are conflicts between this and Resharper 5.0. If I have to choose one, Resharper wins and you'll pry it from my cold dead hands. I suggest running compatibility testing with either Resharper or Code Rush.
The ability to drill down into methods within classes from the Solution Navigator is a great feature and a true time-save for me. That alone makes the download worth time time. I bash Microsoft enough for their mistakes so it's only fair I give credit where it's due -- this is a very well done piece of software.
There are some rough spots. Visual Studio 2010 locked up, then crashed, on the first restart after installing the tools. No problems on subsequent restarts though. Also, the installation has made some minor modifications to my VS UI -- changing tab colors for example. This isn't a disaster, but it IS a no-no for any installer. Don't tinker with people's prefs without permission! Some digging through the Power Tools options/prefs let me reset things but I shouldn't have to do that. Again, these are minor complaints compared to what I'm already getting out of the tools. Nicely done guys!
1) Forgets the settings every update. Not only on/off states, but carefully tuned colours too. Annoys the life out of me, especially combined with those helpful tray baloons nudging me about upgrading the extensions.
2) Fix mixed tabs totally gets in the way. Can you put the stuff in more subtle place? Make it a semi-transparent rollover or something.
3) Highlight current line -- should highlight slightly less. Don't make the attention hotspot difficult to read.
4) Make 'Quick Access' name more descriptive. Quick Access Search for Commands or something, so you can keep calling it short, but for normal people it's obvious what's behind the title.
5) Fix the interaction (tab ordering, default focus and arrow keys) in Add References. Here's the scenario you should keep in mind: open the dialog focus is in 'search' on open, type couple of letters go up, down in the list (don't lose search focus though) ctrl+tab, ctrl+pgup/pgdown between the tabs press enter to use, ctrl+enter to just add to the textbox 'bucket'
BUT, when it auto-updates it resets my options, so the features I turned off are now turned back on. If this happens again next time it auto-updates I shall be forced to remove the whole extension. I don't have time to be changing the options every few weeks for a few useful but non-essential features.
It's useful, but I had to disable most features because it considerably slowed down Visual Studio. The new coloring of currently selected tabs is eye-wrenchingly ugly, especially when using it with custom, more basic colors. (clear red, green, yellow..)
As a productivity tool, may I suggestion the following features for future versions?:
* Ability to duplicate the current line (CTRL+D). Should work in all editors (.cs,.aspx,.xaml,.xml,.sql) * Ability to move a method (not a single line) up or down in the declaring class * Ability to move a parameter left or right * Ability to move an attribute left or right (.aspx, .xaml, .xml) * Ability to generate constructor for a class and pick which private fields should be parameters for initialisation.
Adding Guidelines doesn't work properly with "Tabified" Documents, only "Spacified / Untabified" Documents. If I am 3 characters into the row (2 spaces plus a brace), and add a guideline it is added 3 rows in.
Great set of tools that enhance the Visual Studio experience. Some of the features are more useful than others. The colored tabs I have found are not very useful to my work, but the solution navigator has tons of great features. Hopefully some of these features move from extensions to service packs for Visual Studio in the future.
July 21 version This version is worse than the previous one : Whith the old one it was possible to enter the "[" on another line. With this version, the "|" and "@" are no more possible on a belgium keyboard and no way to bypass the problem.
How is it possible to create great addon without thinking about compatibility ???
Previous version Got 2 problems : 1) Ctrl + drag to copy no more work : it's replaced by "Go To Definition". The power tools should go to definition only if Ctrl click AND mouse up, not mouse down. 2) On a Belgium keyboard, the "Alt Gr" key must be used to enter the "[" key. It's no more possible to enter that key somewhere on a line, just on an empty line : The power tools use this combination of key for "Align Assignments".
Maybe the power tools team can give an options to allow or not all options and add the abilities to change key mapping.
This is a great addon. That freaking add reference dialog is the best ever. And the pinned tabs man, can't work without them now.
If I can think of one thing to make it better, would be the ability to detect ReSharper and CodeRush and automaticly disable those features wich overlaps.
The seccond thing I would suggest is to group all your right menu items inside a submenu, specially on the project context menu, because I have 2 pages to scroll from top to bottom (and my resolution is 900px height). I must note that this item-overload is not only because this addon, power commands and resharper adds a lot.
The set of tools is very interesting and contains of lot of cool features BUT it looses all its value for a developer having a BELGIAN keyboard like me. Soon after having installed the Power Tools I was writing some C# code and when I had to write an IF condition containing an OR operator, that is "||" (twice the pipe character), it opened a search dialog on top of my code. On my keyboard, I get the pipe character using the key combination ALT-GR and "1 or &". Like other people said earlier it would be a good idea to provide a keyboard shortcuts customization dialog. Until this problem is fixed I have no other choice than disabling the Productivity Power Tools... snif!
Somebody forgot to enable the "9 out of 5" extension for this website! It's hard to remember a time before a searchable Add References dialog, current line highlighting, and so many of the other features. Thank you for all your hard work.
I cannot get the search to work in solution navigator. No matter what I type it never finds anything. Also notices if you add a file through solution navigator it sometimes puts it in the wrong folder. Hopefully next update will have these issues fixed.
The new Solution Navigator is amazing. It combines the Solution Explorer with Class View, and adds a fast search and some filters. It's also great to see you can turn off individual features, though there's not a single one I'd want to turn off.
Since the new updates with the ability to turn off the extensions you don't need, and also the addition of the solution explorer this is a must have extension.
Great tools but why the iPhone ON/OFF switches? Whats wrong with the Windows standard checkboxes? It's totally inconsistent with the rest of the options.
very good tools! but (sorry, I've not found any bug reporting page) I had to disable solution navigator! The problem comes with spanish keyboard. Solution Navigator uses [Ctrl+2] key to some funcionality. The problem comes because if you try to use [AltGr+2] (to get the "@" character), it's handled by the [Ctrl+2] event, so you can't write a "@" in Visual Studio! And the problem is that you can't change the keybindings for this functions (or I've been unable to find how to do it) Do you know any solution? because I think solution navigator is the second best tool of this package (Tabwell is the first one 8·D)
There is one feature i would love to see added to this and that is to auto resolve usings.
The easiest example i can use is RegistryKey or StringBuilder, so while i am writing some code and i enter in RegistryKey key = Registry.LocalMachine; then this extension could resolve the using statement at the top of the file to using Microsoft.Win32; or i enter StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder("Hello World"); i would want the using System.Text; to be auto inserted at the top of the file or in the usings section.
This would be a great addition and save hours in having to workout what usings you need upfront of jump around the code window including using statements as you need them, where a using statement cannot be resolved then everything is as it always has been and the user would need to manually include the using statement.
Crashed immediately I tried Quick Access function. Crash is stable.
Problem signature: Problem Event Name: CLR20r3 Problem Signature 01: devenv.exe Problem Signature 02: 10.0.30319.1 Problem Signature 03: 4ba1fab3 Problem Signature 04: PresentationFramework Problem Signature 05: 4.0.0.0 Problem Signature 06: 4ba1f8db Problem Signature 07: 78fe Problem Signature 08: 0 Problem Signature 09: System.Windows.Markup.XamlParse OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1 Locale ID: 1058
Love some of the new features, but why on earth did my current tab's color suddenly change to a damned gradient, when I had already used the reg hack to get the old color back in the first place? Not only has this been changed for no good reason that I can see, I don't seem to be able to find a way to change it back again! It would have been good to have the reg hack included as an option with the rest of the newly introduced options.
For goodness sake, don't you realise that changing things like this just annoys people?! Especially when there's no way to change the unwanted change back again.
Keep up the great work, but PLEASE stop making arbirary changes with no way of undoing them!
Love the new version, just a couple of requests for how to improve it. Implement the functionality of my solution explorer tools - http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ef4ac3e9-d056-4383-8ca2-11721bd879b4
You've got the collapse all but a button to go to the current item, and one to collapse all then go to current item. This is incredibly useful with the added expansions to see members the navigator can get really long fast. by doing this you no longer have to track active item and it keeps it clean.
Also, you add my btns on the solution navigator, they still work but they do the work on solution explorer.
Finally, I, like most developers keep my classes to 1 per file, It would make navigation much faster (and take up less space) if when there is only 1 class in a file doesn't bother with... MyClass.cs --MyClass ----MyMethod ----MyMethod2
and instead have... MyClass.cs ----MyMethod ----MyMethod2
Great toolkit, must-have for all VS2010 users! The intelligent brace completion added in the last update is something I wanted in Visual Studio for a long time, and it works amazingly well.
Is there any option to have a additional feature? I'm looking for a "feature explorer" for my solutions. It's a list of named features, where a feature is a collection of source files (including bookmarks as explicit points or methods or so). When I open a feature, then all source files I defined for that are opened (all others are closed) and positioned. That would be a great help for developing our distributed WCF application where a use case is spreaded out over many source files.
Since I have been using the power tools I've noticed a few bugs. 1. Sometimes the documents seems to get into CTRL-click definition tool mode unintentioinally, so that if I subsequently click with the mouse on the document (anywhere on the document) it tells me that the definition is not available. This is really annoying and I can only stop it trying to resolve definitions by closing the document.
2. Sometimes when I click on a document in the solution explorer, I get shown a previously opened document from the document well.
Otherwise I like: 1. The document well. 2. The full line highlight.
Nice extension with some useful stuff.. although i found a pretty major refresh bug with the tab pinning, restore the window so its not full size, then pin a tab, tehn maximize the screen, and things just go whacko! i had a floating properties/solutions window in the middle of the code window, and the code partially refreshed and was just unusable until i unpinned the tab again. Please fix!
I too love this addin - especially the Document Tab Well! I would like the ability (which PowerCommands has in an options dialog) to be able to choose which components are loaded.
I would rate this as the best add in ever for the searchable add reference dialog. I would literally spend 3-4 minutes each time the dialog came up waiting for them all to load just so I could sort them to find the one I needed. I love the ability to search and cache the assembly list.
I go one problem with this extension. In the reference tab when I add a reference to a dll in a virtual disk create by SUBST command. Visual Studio always link to the bin folder of the projet with the complete path.
Example: Try to link K:\assembly.dll (K is the virtual drive) click Add and Visual studio add this reference C:\Project\bin\debug\assembly.dll.
Without the extension all is working find.
At the moment when i need to add reference I disable the addon, add the reference and activate it.
I haven't used any of the cool features because enabling this extension hijacks Ctrl-Alt and Alt Gr in certain situations in my locale. On a Belgian Dutch keyboard that means that I can't type the '[' character when used as an indexer.
example: string s = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings
I cant' type the [ right behind the line above, I need to type <enter> and then it works
If the cursor is on a blank line, it works, if the cursor is on a line with code on it, Ctrl-Alt or Alt Gr seems to format the line in some way.
I ended up disabling the extension because I can't find a way to change the shortcuts it uses.
Overall, nice, but it has that "unpolished" look-and-feel. I'm playing with it for 10 minutes and that's what I don't like:
- current line's background color is way too contrast and I can't find a way to change it (there is no "Tools|Options|Fonts & Colors" in my VS2010); - what's the reason for having the "Framework/Extensions" switch in the Add Red Dialog? - three popup menu items for the "Column Guides" feature, are you kidding me? My popup menu is already way too long, it should have been hidden somewhere deep in the main menu, you only use this option once. - ability to turn off individual features appears to be missing.
Is there any chance of fixing System.IO.PathTooLongException ? It is because of my username i suppose. Please let me know.
Install Error : System.IO.PathTooLongException: The specified path, file name, or both are too long. The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters, and the directory name must be less than 248 characters. at Microsoft.VisualStudio.ExtensionManager.ExtensionManagerService.BeginInstall(IInstallableExtension installableExtension, Boolean perMachine, AsyncOperation asyncOp) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.ExtensionManager.ExtensionManagerService.InstallWorker(IInstallableExtension extension, Boolean perMachine, AsyncOperation asyncOp)
Adds some very valuable functionality, BUT VS 2010 Ultimate crashes reproducible when generating unit tests with this addon being activated. I have to deactivate it, restart, generate tests, activate it and restart. Tedious.
Different features of this extensions are very useful, but there are some problems, so I can not use it.
Main problem - it's a bug with 'add reference' dialog. I downloaded latest TagLib# (http://download.banshee.fm/taglib-sharp/2.0.3.7/taglib-sharp-2.0.3.7-windows.zip) and I was trying to reference it in the my project. But I can only see message about some COM error (with strange old HRESULT_E_FAIL). Also I can not disable this 'add reference' dialog, so I have disabled all extension :(
At the start of installing Visual Studio 2010 Pro Tower Tools the dialog Visual Studio Extension Installer popped up telling me "This extension contains a digital signature with an invalid certificate". What's the problem?
There really need to be options to enable/disable each feature of this extension. I find some of the features in this extension to be incredibly useful, while others are annoying, unwanted, or conflict with other extensions.
Also, the Tab Well features should probably be a completely separate extension, since it is a fairly feature-rich and isolated set of functionality.
Can you please try to call this function: Public Function SP(ByVal p1 As Guid, ByVal p2 As Guid, ByVal p3 As Guid, ByVal p4 As Guid, ByVal p5 As Guid, ByVal p6 As Guid, ByVal p7 As Guid, ByVal p8 As Guid, ByVal p9 As Guid, ByVal p10 As Guid, ByVal p11 As Guid, ByVal p12 As Guid, ByVal p13 As Guid, ByVal p14 As Guid, ByVal p15 As Guid, ByVal p16 As Guid, ByVal p17 As Guid, ByVal p18 As Guid, ByVal p19 As Guid, ByVal p20 As Guid, ByVal p21 As Guid, ByVal p22 As Guid, ByVal p23 As Guid, ByVal p24 As Guid, ByVal p25 As Guid, ByVal p26 As Guid, ByVal p27 As Guid, ByVal p28 As Guid, ByVal p29 As Guid, ByVal p30 As Guid, ByVal p31 As Guid, ByVal p32 As Guid, ByVal p33 As Guid, ByVal p34 As Guid, ByVal p35 As Guid, ByVal p36 As Guid, ByVal p37 As Guid, ByVal p38 As Guid, ByVal p39 As Guid, ByVal p40 As Guid, ByVal p41 As Guid, ByVal p42 As Guid, ByVal p43 As Guid, ByVal p44 As Guid, ByVal p45 As Guid, ByVal p46 As Guid, ByVal p47 As Guid, ByVal p48 As Guid) End Function Ok you can see to problems: 1- Pressing left and right Arrow kb buttons is too slow! 2- You cannot see all function parameters, this problem in vs2010, and not in vs2008!! Thanks..
The tab coloring seems imperfect. The color should be set in two tab states: selected and unselected. Bonus will be given to allow gradient color setting.
Installation caused VS to report an error about losing a link to the Macro editor and then it immediately quits.
Delete the extension out of %localappdata%\microsoft\visualstudio\10.0\extensions to allow VS to work again.
Edit: Its Microsoft.VisualStudio.ExtensionUpdateCheck.dll that caused the problem. Delete/move it, you'll get a warning on the next start, ignore, and you're good to go.
Edit: As posted earlier, Ctrl-Click is partially broken now: "Please disable the error dialog that occurs if you hold Ctrl and click a selected block of text. I often use this to drag-copy a piece of text to another line, and I keep getting error dialogs saying can't navigate to the definition. I would really like to still be able to drag-copy selected text using the Ctrl key."
This is awesome extension. However, when I click on AddNew Reference, it hangs for me for certain projects. It would be nice if there is an option to switch back to default dialog.
Install Error : System.IO.PathTooLongException: The specified path, file name, or both are too long. The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters, and the directory name must be less than 248 characters.
This is an oh-so-handy and much-needed extension. The tab well features were drastically needed, and while it doesn't quite give me my "multiple rows of tabs" feature that I requested, it comes a lot closer (and can actually give you two rows, if you use pinning, which is great).
The Ctrl+Click to go to definition is brilliant and SO much faster than F12 for me because F12 is hard to get to on my keyboard (have to hold Fn down and really stretch).
However I do have one request! Please disable the error dialog that occurs if you hold Ctrl and click a selected block of text. I often use this to drag-copy a piece of text to another line, and I keep getting error dialogs saying can't navigate to the definition. I would really like to still be able to drag-copy selected text using the Ctrl key.
I managed to overcome the crash issue by removing the update dlls in the extension (%localappdata%\microsoft\visualstudio\10.0\extensions). Wonder if there is some firewall issue?
It's a great bunch of features, and I appreciate why you dumped them together (this is 'your plugin' right?) but really many of them should be either separated out or, where they need to be linked should have the ability to disable individual aspects.
I see no reason whatsoever to have Ctrl key bindings messed with to have a document well for example (there are plenty of people that feel the same) and likely there are other issues for other users.
That said what it does is excellent, and where config is provided (the document well) it is powerful and effective.
I've seeen only the Add Reference dialog, and finally this is the one I was expecting from this VS 2010. The VS 2010 embedded Add Reference dialog was completely unusable.
Great addition but the new Add Reference Window goes back to starting on the .NET Assemblies tab which is slow starting up. Why does the new Add References dialog not go to the Projects tab like the new dialog for VS2010.
Can you update of the tools to start at the Projects tab for the Add Reference dialog?
This looks great so far, with one nitpick: the "Add Reference" extension defaults to showing the oh-so-slow "Assemblies" page; one of the great improvements of VS2010 over VS2008 was that the (standard) add reference dialog defaults to the (fast loading) "projects" page. Can this setting be tweaked somehow, so I don't need to wait 5 minutes before I can add a reference to my own other project in a solution?
I love that I can make my signature help tip sexy like the rest of my dark theme!
I was disappointed that this was linked from a connect issue regarding the MRU tab ordering feature available in VS2008, but that this functionality was missing from the extension...
I could have missed the configuration for this of course. (LRU removal is not the same).
I have a 30" monitor which generally tends to fit between 10 and 15 tabs across - having my MRU tab as the leftmost tab makes me much more productive. :-D
I love the color-coded tabs! This is something I requested on Connect almost a year ago - it's great to see it in this extension (along with all the other cool features)! Thanks!
I give this extension max stars simply because it supplants the default "Add Reference" dialog, which is dysfunctional, with an "Add Reference" dialog that is considerably more performant and usable. I also like the "tabify" feature that you can use to make a document's usage of tabs/spaces consistent.
Does not handle setups where proxies are in use, fails with a ProxyCredentialsRequiredException which causes VS2k10 to crash. Had to uninstall the extension in order to use VS2k10 again.
It takes about 20 seconds to install this upgrade, but it saves me about five minutes every time I open the Add References dialog. I haven't even tried any of the other features and this is already on my must-have list.
So that I can use "Create a new Window with the selection as a root" over a selection of projects (say I'm only working on an area comprising 3 projects of the 25 in the current solution ;))
Koda (http://koda.codeplex.com/) enhanced Visual Studio 2008 with two powerful functions. You could search for Types and Files very fast. Do you have plans for something like that?
I LOVE this add-in, but there's one think about that really keeps nagging me a lot since I installed it:
- Opening any file from my solution or changing the active tab takes about 0.5 seconds - Having about 30 files opened slows my IDE to a crawl - Closing about 20 tabs takes about 5-10 seconds.
This may not sound too bad, but it really makes the IDE feel sluggish.
The issues instantly disappear when disabling Power Tools. Just disabling the Document Well seems to make it scale better with more tabs, but opening a new file still feels sluggish.
I'm using an (otherwise almost idle) quad-core Intel CPU, an SSD and have plenty of memory available, so my system can hardly be the problem.
It seems from some of the questions below that at least some other users are also experiencing this problem.
If there's anything I can do to help you debug this, feel free to shoot me an e-mail. You can find my contact info at devermind.com.
I THINK I correctly installed the Productivity Power Tools, but for the life of me I can't bring up the solution navigator in VS 2010. All I see is still the old Solution Explorer.
Is there a way to disable the colorized parameter help? I use a dark theme and you can't read anything in the help because the background of the popup is white.
see http://lh4.ggpht.com/_oVoeVOb8bdQ/TB0KzUVFL7I/AAAAAAAAAI4/07AIRESD1EM/vs2010dark_thumb%5B1%5D.png?imgmax=800 for an example
I had this problem as well, and I had to disable the extension because of it. However, it seems that the Fonts and Colors selection for "Signature Help Tooltip Background" is the Text Editor color definition that effects this. I changed that to Gray and the colorized parameter help is much better now.
For my dark scheme, in Options > Environment > Fonts and Colors > "Signature Help Tooltip Background", switching both the foreground and background colors to Automatic instead of Default made it look exactly like my color scheme thus making it readable.
The only problem i have with changing it in the options is I have to go in there and "reset" it every time I start up visual studio. The value still says "gray" but it doesn't actually apply it unless I open the options and click OK.
We just released a new version of the Productivity Power Tools which allows you to change the background colour separately by using the "Signature Help Tooltip Background" option.
Can someone tell me which colour setting changes the text in the tooltip? It's apparently not Signature Help - Text because I set that to White and it's still black :(
I have the same problem as Ian and Nick -- changing the color in that setting has no effect. But really, I just want to turn off the tooltip entirely. It creates flicker in my document and gives me a headache after a while. I had hopes that by installing the power tools, I'd have the ability to eliminate it, but no such luck. It isn't as bad as the obnoxious flickering quick access bar, but it is pretty bad.
Please stop "helping" me by making stuff flicker over my code. I can right click and get more help if I want it. Yes, it is one extra click. No, it isn't as convenient. But it doesn't flicker constantly as I scroll through my code.
How to get rid of the single line with class information etc. at the top?
How do I get rid of the single line with class and method information at the top, just below the tabs? I already have that with Visual Assist, and the current implementation in this extension seems to slow down editing and navigation significantly with large files and/or many files open.
..and I just realized that was a feature of VS2010 itself, disabled using the Options->Text editor->Navigation bar setting. So nvm me, carry on, nothing to see here :)
Can you please stop resetting the preferences for this extension when an update is installed? I have some commands turned off, and each time I install an update, all commands get reset to on. Then I have to turn off the ones I don't want and restart Studio again.
It's got so many cool things in it but I had to disable the component because for some odd reason, every time I open an .aspx file in the solution explorer, it crashes VS2010 Pro. Sigh... Submitted several crash reports to MS, hope they get to it. :)
I'm sorry that the Productivity Power Tools are crashing for you. The easiest way for us to diagnose the crash is for you to catch it in the Visual Studio debugger and send us the call stack. Alternately, if you can go run eventvwr.msc, you should see an event in your logs for an application crash. In the details, there will be a fault number or bucket ID. If you can provide us with that number then we can identify the crash in our systems.
So, I've updated it to Version 1.0.2.3 and it is still crashing when I open a file in my solutions. Again, if I disable the extension, it works fine. As requested, here is what I got in the event logs:
Fault bucket 1344596583, type 5 Event Name: AppHangB1 Response: Not available Cab Id: 0
These files may be available here: C:\Users\FS-DUL-10\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportArchive\AppHang_devenv.exe_f44c1ca4326156f15cf1f728acd3f59db82ec0_07826fb3
The new Parameter Help doesn't show the exceptions that are documented in a functions summary, when the mouse is over a function. Can this be customized or is this just missing?
I *think* you are actually referring to Interactive Tooltips offered by the Solution Navigator. It does not show Exceptions from the doc comments. We have had multiple reports of this and will try to get it fixed in the next release of the Pro Power Tools.
If you like, you can turn off just the Interactive Tooltips feature in Tools | Options | Productivity Power Tools | Solution Navigator | Enable Interactive Tooltips. That will let you use the Solution Navigator and the built in tooltips will show up in the code editor.
since i don't use the solution navigator, i didn't know that the missing exception list comes from the interactive tooltips. I thought it was part of the colorized parameter help.
I need the exceptions listed in the tooltips in the code editor. How about adding them to the interactive tooltip?
Alex
Small consistency bug when rooting project members
When you make a member (subfolder, class, etc.) of a project the root element, the new root has an up arrow to move up through the scope. This shows up until you get back to the solution as the root.
However, if you make the project itself the new root, this arrow does not show up. You can still use the back button (next to the search text box) to go back to the solution, but it seems the up arrow should appear whenever the solution is not the root.
Issue with Shift+Enter after installing and uninstalling
After installing this extension, and disabling the features I don't need (such as the Shift+Enter to add semicolon and new line), I noticed that if I press Enter while holding Shift, it doesn't do anything. It used to just ignore the Shift and insert a new line. Even after disabling and uninstalling the extension, this problem remains.
When creating a new method, I'm lazy with the shift key, so I just type: void Method [PRESS SHIFT] () [ENTER] { [ENTER] } [RELEASE SHIFT] But now, it just puts the brackets on the same line because it ignores pressing Enter while Shift is held down :(
Thanks for your feedback. We've filed this bug, and will post an update when we have a fix. For the time being, you can follow Darren's workaround to get Shift Enter rebound until we release a fix.
It seems like even if it is disable/uninstalled from VS 2010, it still holds on to shift enter. I'm glad to see I'm not the only person that's been annoyed by this.
Version 10.0.10819.19 Add References Crashes fixed?
I just updated this extension, but how I do I figure out what bug were fixed? Do you have any release note?
I have a few settings that I always disable due to problem with the French layout keyboard. So beside retesting everything, I'd like to read some release notes and bug fixes.
I've seen this crash with the following settings: - No scroll in tab well - No tab sort - No "Remove tabs by usage order"
Can you verify this are the conditions under which the crash happens? If this is the case, as a workaround (while the fix gets published) you can try enabling the last option mentioned above. This will give you most of the functionality, and you should not have the crash when selecting the "Close all but pinned" command.
I've deselected Automatic Brace Completion because a different add-in handles that for me. When I let Power Tools update it seems to turn that selection back on.
Anyone else see that? If so, can updates please leave non-default settings alone?
It's not just the major settings, either; every time I update, it resets my color choices for the active line highlighting, deleting the custom colors from the selector as it does so. This is particularly frustrating as it means I can't even restore the same colours I had.
This is the most annoying thing about this extension. I'm holding off unstalling the latest update as it still appears to reset the settings. I'll just have to wait for the next update and hope.
On my laptop when using the Searchable Add Reference dialog an ArgumentException is thrown any time I attempt to add references to a new project. The stack trace is as follows:
System.ArgumentException: The path is not of a legal form. at System.IO.Path.NormalizePath(String path, Boolean fullCheck, Int32 maxPathLength) at System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(String path) at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AddReferenceDialog..ctor(IVsHierarchy projectHierarchy, DTE2 applicationObject) at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AddReferencePackage.ShowAddReferenceDialogOnIdle(IdleComponent idleComponent)
What appears to be happening is that within the AddReferenceDialog ctor it grabs the full name of the current solution to attempt to determine the directory name, but in this case the full name is returning an empty string which is causing Path.GetDirectoryName to fail.
We've seen some issues with user who have Tools -> Options -> Project and Solutions -> General -> Save new solutions when created unchecked. Can you try checking that option and seeing if the issue still reproduces?
That appears to be the case. If the first time the dialog is invoked within that instance of Visual Studio is within a temporary solution then the full name of that solution will be an empty string.
Since the field in question only appears to serve as the initial browsing directory for the dialog and that it will be set to the location of any assemblies browsed to by the user that in the case that the solution full name is not a valid file path that this variable would default to the user's profile path or similar.
I found a bug in Solution Navigator (Productivity Power Tools)(10.0.10710.22)
When press Collapse All button (second in top of Solution Navigator window) filter "Open" for solution work incorrect, it display full project structure but must be empty.
When will you fix this bug? It's annoying and still present in the latest release! Or maybe would you release source codes? It would be easy for anyone to fix this issues himself and not wait for the official release that will be ready who knows when...
I apologize, but the last few posts were not clear on the issue that you are asking about - the Add Ref crash or the Solution Navigator issue. We've fixed the Add Reference Dialog crash and that fix will be in the next drop of the Pro Power Tools.
For the Solution Navigator Issue (Anonymous55656), I cannot reproduce this problem. If you can do this consistently, could you please start a new discussion topic and provide the details there?
Sorry for the inconvenience these issues have caused. Please continue to let us know of issues you are finding with the Pro Power Tools.
I'm still experiencing the "path is not of a legal form" error trying to add references to throwaway projects with the 10819.19 drop. Or did "fixed in the next drop" mean "the next drop after 10819.19"?
Thanks!
-Matt
Bug: Opening .SQL File Generates an Exception Message
I opened a .SQL file after install the latest update and restarted VS. I turned off the column guide feature. I opened a Database project and opened a .SQL file and received the following message:
The "Microsoft.ColumnGuidePackage.ColumnGuidePackage, ColumnGuidePackageProTools, Version 10.0.0.0...." could not load successfully.
I am experiencing a crash in VS 2010 Premium with this installed. When I go to Data->Schema Compare->New Schema Comparison... VS 2010 crashes. I'm running Win7 x86. If I disable this add-in, the New Schema Comparison function works correctly.
Yep, I'm having the same issue. Here's my problem signature if it's worth anything:
Problem signature: Problem Event Name: CLR20r3 Problem Signature 01: devenv.exe Problem Signature 02: 10.0.30319.1 Problem Signature 03: 4ba1fab3 Problem Signature 04: mscorlib Problem Signature 05: 4.0.0.0 Problem Signature 06: 4ba1da6f Problem Signature 07: 1164 Problem Signature 08: 7 Problem Signature 09: N3CTRYE2KN3C34SGL4ZQYRBFTE4M13NB OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.768.3 Locale ID: 1033
Version 10.0.10725.12 doesn't fix the bug, the crash still occurs if opening Schema Compare or Data Compare outside a solution. Compares are executing correctly with an open solution. VS2010 Ultimate, Win7 x64.
I too can confirm that this is still an issue with VS2010 Ultimate on Vista 32-bit. If someone needs more info on my setup to reproduce the issue, just let me know.
I have had a similar problem with data compare. It just happened after the latest update. When I go to data compare, VS says it needs to shut down. When I disable this I am working fine again.
Thanks for for reporting this crash with Schema Compare. We've checked in a fix and it will be part of the next version of the Productivity Power Tools. You can disable the Solution Navigator extension if you find that this is interrupting your work.
I opened a bug for this on Microsoft Connect and submitted a crash dump. The case says that it's was being forwarded to the necessary team for further analysis.
We're looking into this to see what we can do about preventing this issue in the next release. Good catch and I'll let you know what we end up doing about it.
I also noticed that the "automatic brace completion" component of the addon breaks #region snippets. Would it be possible to not have the brace completion affect "#region"? Or make it configurable which "braces" it tries to complete so I can disable it from affecting #region?
The Colorized Parameter Help Customization is great -- but I'd really like to see the exact same thing for all tooltips in the editor when hovering over an element.
Can the Colorized Help Parameter be extended to do this for all tooltips?
I have installed this tool and found it very useful. But one problem I am having is same as many have listed above. When I have the Power tools enabled, I am not able to Add References to my Web project. I get this error: "The Add Reference Dialog could not be shown due to the error: An item with the same key has already been added."
And I donot get this error, if I disable the Power Tools from the extension manager. Any possible solution for now. Thanks.
Hi Oren, This is a great suggestion and something we will consider for a future version.
Zullu, We've seen a few more complaints on this above and are investigating. Until then you only need to disable the Add Reference extension to work around this.
Any info on when a fix for the add reference dialog issue will be released? To be honest, the improved add reference dialog is the main reason I use the tool and I had to remove the extension because it would work for a while then suddenly add reference would quit working until I reinstalled the extension again.
Cannot Add Domain Service Class from Solution Navigator
If I try to add a Domain Service Class by right clicking on a folder in the Solution Navigator, choosing "Add New Item," and selecting "Domain Service Class," the "Add New Domain Service Class" dialog has no DataContexts listed. If I do the same thing from the built in Solution Explorer it shows the DataContext fine.
When I tabify a document that has "mixed tabs and spaces" than the algorithm changes lines that don't need a change. I can see this at the yellow bar appearing on every line that contains a tab.
This is irritating. The algorithm should only change lines that need a change!
Where do I turn of the Quick Search(ctrl+alt+2) feature?
I noticed copying code by highlighting and then dragging with the Crontrol key pressed (Ctrl + LeftMouse) was not working. It started working again, after I disabled all power tools in the TOOLS > OPTIONS... menu, restarted Visual Studion 2010, and then enabled the power tools. Disabling the entire extension and tehn enabling it dis not help.
(My reply got cut off AGAIN! Apaprently, the ampersand character is killing it!) Actually, all click and drag events have stopped working! When I attempt to perform a normal drag on selected C# code, the text selection starts following the mouse pointer, as if I am selecting text. I am unable to isolate a specific Power Tool feature that is causing the issue. Disabling the entire extension works!
This is not likely to be related to my other VS 2010 mouse issues: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/577155/mouse-scroll-wheel-scrolls-other-windows-instead-of-code-window
Sorry to heep posting on this issue, but it is very annoying.
I am now able to click and drag selected text normally. However, any time Power Tools is enabled, even if all features are turned off in the options dialog, I am unable to use Ctrl LeftMouse to drag and drop a copy of the selected text. Disabling Power Tools resolves the issue.
Here's my post about this and other issues: http://thecurlybrace.blogspot.com/2010/08/frustrations-with-visual-studio-2010.html
Unhandled InvalidCastException starting with elevated priviledges
I get an unhandled InvalidCastException when I start VS2010 as administrator with PPT activated. If I start normal everything is fine. Deactivating PPT lets VS2010 starts as administrator too.
When the Exception occurs loading VS gets until rendering the startpage then it is closed and I'm not fas t enough to get a debugger attached to deep dive into the error. So I only could provide a eventlog file.
Solution Navigator does not show startup project in bold when inside a solution folder
In my solution, I have a solution folder named "Samples" with a few console application projects contained in it. If I mark one of these projects as the startup project, I expect the project name to be in bold, but it is not. If I mark a project that is not inside a folder as the startup project, it correctly shows up as bold..
Highlighted braces on current line are barely visible
At first I thought that matching braces/parentheses weren't being highlighted, then noticed that the highlight color is just barely different than the background when on the currently selected line. It would be nice to have the matching braces stand out a bit more.
"This extension contains a digital signature with an invalid certificate" message
After working with my solution for a long time, in Solution Navigator appears unknown items. You can see it by this image http://www.flickr.com/photos/26274907@N08/4904102568/
Are you looking for a feature which would automatically add /- glyphs in the left hand margin when you are inside of methods? If so, this is a great suggestion that is already on our list. Did you know that you can actually collapse these blocks manually? You can right click
Add Reference Dialog Adds GAC references even when you browse for a file
If the Add References dialog finds an assembly in the GAC named the same as an assembly you've browsed to, the dialog will, incorrectly, add a reference to the GAC assembly.
Totally agree with that. Thats a very annoying bug. I set up a libs folder where all libs used are located. I copied the Microsoft.ReportingViewer.Common from its orign path into my libs directory and wanted to add a reference to my folder, because the TFS has this dll not installed. But adding the reference via "Browse" from my folder, always adds a reference to the .dlls origin path. After Turning off the improved add reference dialog I used the origin dialog again, and with this one the reference has been added correct.
Installed today's version (Win7, VS 2010) and cannot add references to one of my projects. It works fine for others in the same SLN.
--------------------------- Could not show Add Reference Dialog --------------------------- The Add Reference Dialog could not be shown due to the error:
An item with the same key has already been added.
The error details has been saved to C:\Users\XXX\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\ShowAddReferenceDialog.log --------------------------- OK ---------------------------
The log then contains:
System.ArgumentException: An item with the same key has already been added. at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentException(ExceptionResource resource) at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.Insert(TKey key, TValue value, Boolean add) at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.VisualStudio.GetProjectReferenceIdentities(IVsHierarchy projectHierarchy) at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AddReferenceDialog..ctor(IVsHierarchy projectHierarchy, DTE2 applicationObject) at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AddReferencePackage.ShowAddReferenceDialogOnIdle(IdleComponent idleComponent)
I just started getting the same error dialog. My log entry looks the same as yours. I haven't had to add any references for a couple of weeks so don't know when exactly it started happening. Disabling the enhanced Add Reference dialog allows me to get to the old dialog though, so I guess for now I'll have to live with the old dialog.
System.ArgumentException: An item with the same key has already been added. at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentException(ExceptionResource resource) at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.Insert(TKey key, TValue value, Boolean add) at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.VisualStudio.GetProjectReferenceIdentities(IVsHierarchy projectHierarchy) at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AddReferenceDialog..ctor(IVsHierarchy projectHierarchy, DTE2 applicationObject) at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AddReferencePackage.ShowAddReferenceDialogOnIdle(IdleComponent idleComponent)
Thanks for reporting this issue. I've logged a bug and we'll see if we can figure it out given the call stack. If there is any more information you can provide about the project with the issue, please post it here.
Sorry for the inconvenience. Please keep sending us issues and we'll try to get them fixed as soon as possible.
So many excellent features, but have had to disable. VS regularly suffers from blank screens. Clicking on one item in Explorer or Navigator results in another window getting focus.
Occasionally we see problems with hardware acceleration and Visual Studio. Can you try turning it off from Tools.Options.Environment.General? If it still reproduces can you send a screenshot to snfeedback @ microsoft.com?
If you have a VS2010 solution, with 2 projects. 1 is a winform project, the other is a project that outputs an assembly called "Utilities.dll".
make the winform project reference the utilities project.
add a couple of user controls or custom controls to the winform project that call some arbitrary function in a class in the Utilities project.
put some of these controls on a new winform in the vs designer...save it.... try to reopen the winform... designer crash.
debugging from another instance of VS2010... it looks like the designer is loading this "utilities.dll" [%USERPROFILE%\APPDATA\LOCAL\MICROSOFT\VISUALSTUDIO\10.0\EXTENSIONS\MICROSOFT\PRODUCTIVITY POWER TOOLS\10.0.10725.12\Utilities.dll]
instead of the one that the winform project is referencing, and since the powertools\utilities.dll does not contain the class upon which my custom controls depend....it explodes.
other than giving MY utilties.dll a different file name... what other options are available? I expect that utilities.dll is a very common assembly name out in the wild.
Good catch. You are right, the Pro Power Tools' utilities.dll is strong name signed and already loaded, so that one wins. We will rename this file in the next release, but until then you can either rename or strong name sign your utilities.dll.
Sorry for the inconvenience. Thanks for the report and keep them coming.
Script Documents seem to be repeating and remain in the Navigator after testing is complete. Here is a screenshot of the problem: http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/1139/scriptdocuments.png
Thanks for the bug report and the image. We were able to reproduce this problem here. The only work around we can find is to close and reopen the project, which I know isn't ideal.
We will take a look at fixing this in the next release of the Pro Power Tools.
I am sorry for the inconvenience, but please do continue to let us know about issues you run into with the Pro Power Tools.
Is it my imagination, or does closing files take a lot longer after these power tools are installed?
It seems that it was really fast before.
I can't say 100% that it was the fault of the productivity power tools, but pretty much right after I installed them, it started taking a long time to close files in the IDE. For a single file, probably about 0.75 seconds. I opened up 15 .cs files and invoked "Close All" from the menu, and the IDE hung for nearly 5 seconds while it completed the operation.
Disabling or uninstalling the power tools didn't seem to help.
If uninstalling the power tools doesn't resolve the problem, then there is likely a different cause. Can you try disabling other extensions to see if that resolves the problem? If it doesn't can you send me an email (seanla @ microsoft. com) and I'll send you instructions to report performance problems.
After installing this extension, standard Copy/Paste with the edit menu and CTRL-C, CTRL-V are broken, e.g. when editing C# code. Any ideas on how to fix this or do I just need to ditch the whole extension? I do like the Add Reference feature.
may be due to copyashtml extension. try do delete copyashtml.dll in folder "%localappdata%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Extensions\Microsoft\Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power Tools" and verify if this problem solved
I have had a similar problem with data compare. It just happened after the latest update. When I go to data compare, VS says it needs to shut down. When I disable this I am working fine again.
I should mention, I've narrowed this down and it turns out it's the ctrl click go to definition causing this. As I try to copy/paste, often the ctrl is already hit before I click on a literal. Since the literals don't get the underline like variables, I'd assumed ctrl click wouldn't to go to definitions on them. And in fact, I really wish this was the case, or that literals, like everything else, got underlined, so you could tell it was going to go to definition. I have disabled the ctrl click go to definition for now, but it would be nicer if I could disable it only for literals.
Alternatively, maybe even preferably, if it required ctrl alt click, rather than ctrl click, this kind of issue wouldn't happen.
I really like the tools they cut out some little hassles every day. I would suggest you add to the suite an extended find and replace dialog. The issue I find with the normal VS one is you can't specify file types to search in for instance .cs only.
There is sort of the same functionality in the find in files dialog but you couldn't for instance search in .cs files without looking in .designer.cs files as far as I can tell because of the way it works. If you added an included file type list and an excluded file type list it would make it really flexible.
I'm sure there are other improvements that could be added to the find and replace dialog along with this.
Application: devenv.exe Framework Version: v4.0.30319 Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception. Exception Info: System.NullReferenceException Stack: at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AssemblyReferenceProvider.PopulateObservableAssemblyCollection(System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable`1<Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.Utilities.AssemblyIdentity>) at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AssemblyReferenceProvider.PopulateFrameworkAssemblies(System.Object) at System.Threading.QueueUserWorkItemCallback.WaitCallback_Context(System.Object) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(System.Threading.ExecutionContext, System.Threading.ContextCallback, System.Object, Boolean) at System.Threading.QueueUserWorkItemCallback.System.Threading.IThreadPoolWorkItem.ExecuteWorkItem() at System.Threading.ThreadPoolWorkQueue.Dispatch() at System.Threading._ThreadPoolWaitCallback.PerformWaitCallback()
It was a indeed cool feature, I look forward to it for a long period. But it seems that there may be some bug.....copy code often not fully copy all of the codes I selected, and got some incomplete html tags.
I think this issue has been solved. It's due to convert html text to clipboard html data format process, we can't just calculate how many characters there are, we need to count how many bytes used under utf-8 encoding. In addition, I also added a feature to remove block text indent.
See http://www.cnblogs.com/nicch/archive/2010/06/13/vs2010_powertools_copyashtml_fix.html for solution(chinese). or download copyashtml.dll(http://files.cnblogs.com/nicch/CopyAsHtml.zip) or project(http://files.cnblogs.com/nicch/CopyAsHtml_src.zip).
Thank you very much for reporting the issue and great job on fixing it yourself! I've just fixed the bug, so you should see it working fine in the next update: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kirillosenkov/archive/2010/08/11/html-copy-extension-from-pro-power-tools-not-working-with-live-writer.aspx
Every time I use the AddReferenceDialog I have the following exception thrown after I have added the reference/when the dialog is closing. I am using v 10.0.10710.22
20/07/2010 10:00:33 System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AddReferenceDialog.AddReferenceDialogView_Closed(Object sender, EventArgs e) at System.Windows.Window.OnClosed(EventArgs e) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.PlatformUI.DialogWindowBase.OnClosed(EventArgs e) at System.Windows.Window.WmDestroy()
I have the exact same symptoms but the error is different, using VS 2010 Ultimate on Windows XP SP3, I guess testing wasn't a priority in this release.
Application: devenv.exe Framework Version: v4.0.30319 Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception. Exception Info: System.NullReferenceException Stack: at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.TypeLibraryReferenceProvider.PopulateTypeLibraries(System.Object) at System.Threading.QueueUserWorkItemCallback.WaitCallback_Context(System.Object) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(System.Threading.ExecutionContext, System.Threading.ContextCallback, System.Object, Boolean) at System.Threading.QueueUserWorkItemCallback.System.Threading.IThreadPoolWorkItem.ExecuteWorkItem() at System.Threading.ThreadPoolWorkQueue.Dispatch() at System.Threading._ThreadPoolWaitCallback.PerformWaitCallback()
Is it just me or did the ability to close a tab by clicking the middle mouse button stop working? I can still do this in SQL Studio, Firefox, etc. so seems like the mouse is working fine.
The solution navigator is great! I have two suggestions.
1. Support for drag-and-drop adding of items. If you drag an item into a project in SN now, instead of adding the item to the project, the item simply opens as if it were dragged into the main VS window.
2. Support for re-ordering of projects. Projects show up alphabetically in SN just like in SE. However, when working on a couple of projects in a large solution, I would like those projects to appear at the top. Allowing projects to be re-ordered would be great, but even "Pin To Top" would be nice.
Thanks for a great extension! I absolutely love it.
Solution Navigator - Keyboard shortcut to search box
If you expand a project and select a node. Now collapse the project which presumably leaves that node selected. Using the mouse wheel to scroll no longer works. Anyone else see this behavior?
If you expand a project and select a node. Now collapse the project which presumably leaves that node selected. Using the mouse wheel to scroll no longer works. Anyone else see this behavior?
Suggestion for a refresh button in the Solution Navigator
I noticed that the Solution Navigator currently misses a refresh button like the one present in the Solution Explorer.
This is the only feature that keeps me from totally removing the Solution Explorer tab since I didn't find any other functionality that isn't also present in the Solution Navigator provided by this excellent extension.
Hi, since the last update the searchable Add Reference dialog doesn't work anymore: --------------------------- Could not show Add Reference Dialog --------------------------- The Add Reference Dialog could not be shown due to the error:
Der Pfad hat ein ungültiges Format. (German, translated: The Path has an incorrect format.)
The error details has been saved to C:\Users\SeriTools\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\ShowAddReferenceDialog.log --------------------------- OK ---------------------------
C:\Users\SeriTools\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\ShowAddReferenceDialog.log: 09.08.2010 12:27:18 System.ArgumentException: Der Pfad hat ein ungültiges Format. bei System.IO.Path.NormalizePath(String path, Boolean fullCheck, Int32 maxPathLength) bei System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(String path) bei Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AddReferenceDialog..ctor(IVsHierarchy projectHierarchy, DTE2 applicationObject) bei Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AddReferencePackage.ShowAddReferenceDialogOnIdle(IdleComponent idleComponent)
I noticed a problem with the default keyboard settings: "Edit.AlignAssignments" is assigned to the [ key by default (on azerty keyboards anyway), which causes weird behaviour when trying to enter a line like this one:
var sep = new char[] { ',', ' ' };
It just won't let you type in the [ character and will try to align the right assignment operator instead. I think that in this case the parser fails to neutralize the command, because it is possible to type those square brackets under different conditions without any problem. Perhaps it could be avoided if the default key was not a key combination related to a symbol so currently used in the .NET languages.
This is an excellent extension with loads of features I'm finding really useful, but there are a couple of issues. 1) Add reference dialog performance: When first opening this, it takes ages to display a list of items. Someone has already mentioned changing it to open on the Projects tab and loading the .Net list in the background - I think this would be a good idea. 2) Whole line highlighting colour: When I open VS, the colour set in the options for the whole line highlight is not applied. I need to open the options on the fonts/colours page and click OK to have the correct colour applied. This is quite annoying as I have a custom dark colour scheme and can't see the line text with the default highlight colour.
I have the same issues, both of them. The second one (current line background color) is the most annoying feature in my working environment (after Resharper who is slowing everything down).
I'm with Rob and Alexey on both these points, but the second one, especially so.
A lot of us go 'darkside' with our IDE choice, and on any tool, not just this one (which is excellent), there's always an interval where we can't see things and have to go in and find and tweak settings for contrast. With this tool, the whole line highlight was white on white to begin with, which made for interesting times. I think testing updates against the popular darkside themes (VirtualInk, Metroline, WekeRoad) would go a long way toward making this a premier extension.
I use the WekeRoad theme and love it. The current line hightlight doesn't play well with it at all and to make matters worse, changing the Current Line(*) does nothing for me no matter what I try. Aside from that, it seems great, but that was the feature that drew me to it in the first place and I can't use it. :(
Highlighting of matching parens, braces broken by Pro Power Tools
Normally, the text editor in Visual Studio will highlight matching parentheses when you type a right (closing) parenthesis. It also does this for square brackets and braces.
For example, after typing the following text, the editor will highlight the left parenthesis and the right parenthesis with a gray background color, until another key is pressed. if (a == b)
With the Productivity Power Tools installed, the matching braces, parens, and brackets are no longer highlighted. I also tried turning off the "Automatic Brace Completion" feature in the options, but that didn't make any difference. The "Automatic Delimiter Highlighting" feature in the regular options is enabled.
I hate to give up the Pro Power Tools just for this issue, but it's a tough call given, how much I have come to rely on the matching paren highlighting.
It wasn't broken. The current line highlight color was simply the same color as the Brace Matching (Rectangle) background color. I resolved the issue by simply changing the current line highlight color to a lighter shade (I think it was a little dark, anyway). I always change the Brace Matching color to orange, so it is easier to see.
See the "Highlight Current Line" section of my blog post, to see how to adjust these: http://thecurlybrace.blogspot.com/2010/08/practical-uses-of-visual-studio-2010.html
First of all, where SHOULD I submit suggestions for the Auto Brace Completion tool?
SUGGESTION: I have a love-hate relationship with this tool, because I love the auto-completion, but am hampered when nesting existing code into a new IF statement. I suggest these things, to facilitate auto-completion around existing code:
1. Hot key to toggle auto completion on and off 2. Hot key to suppress auto completion for the next brace character typed 3. Hot key to wrap selected text with a specific character (i.e. Alt-Shift-[, Ctrl-Alt-Shift-{, Alt-Shift-(, etc.) 4. Option to enable auto completion for each brace type, individually
I love the extension (though I sometimes despise it). Thanks for including it in Power Tools!
I'm using the latest version. Starting from yesterday, I got an exception every time I close the "Add Reference" dialog. This was irritating, but not critical. Today, I start getting the following exception when _opening_ that dialog (the dialog never shows up, so I had to disable the plugin:
// can't paste the full stack trace since the message is limited to 2000 characters
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AddReferenceDialog.AddReferenceDialogView_Closed(Object sender, EventArgs e) at System.Windows.Window.OnClosed(EventArgs e) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.PlatformUI.DialogWindowBase.OnClosed(EventArgs e) at System.Windows.Window.WmDestroy()
...
System.ArgumentException: The path is not of a legal form. at System.IO.Path.NormalizePath(String path, Boolean fullCheck, Int32 maxPathLength) at System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(String path) at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AddReferenceDialog..ctor(IVsHierarchy projectHierarchy, DTE2 applicationObject) at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AddReferencePackage.ShowAddReferenceDialogOnIdle(IdleComponent idleComponent)
- Running unit tests from right-click context menu (through CodeRush test runner OR TestDriven.net) fails on the project level. Works fine within Solution Explorer (and actually will work if you run once from Solution Explorer, then try running from Solution Navigator. It appears to carry over the context from the previous run in Solution Explorer if that helps to diagnose).
- Right click -> New Folder... doesn't automatically begin the rename process for the folder by placing the caret in the folder name with keyboard focus -- this is a bit annoying. See existing Solution Explorer for the appropriate functionality.
Thanks for an otherwise solid add-on. I'll report any more issues I run into.
(ZubArt says nothing happens when he clicks while pressing Ctrl.)
I believe the object name turns into a hyperlink after pressing the Control key for 1 or 2 seconds, instead of immediately changing to a hyperlink. This is likely part of the version 10.0.10710.22 fix.
As a VS SDK developer, your extension seems a great example of the usage of all API within VS SDK. Do you planned to deliver this extension as source code - or at least there is a way to have access to it?
When I try to open the XML Schema Explorer, the 'Solution Navigator' gets the focus and the XML Schema Explorer pops up and get closed immediately again. So where's the XML Schema Explorer Window? I think it has to do with tools. Same experience someone?
Thanks for the update Sean and company! Your support of and responses to this tool have been outstanding.
I like the idea of the interactive tool tips but they seem to be a little rough to use. I was doing my testing with the XmlSerializer.Serialize method. These are what I found.
- When you hover on a method, the signature is cut off with ellipsis. The tool tip for the tool tip shows the full signature. :-) - After clicking on the tool tip, the signature is still cut off. - If I resize the box, it doesn't remember the size for next time, and the signature is still cut off. - The expanded tool tip doesn't show the overloads for the method or its exceptions. - Navigating up to the class to see the overloads shows me 7 "Serialize" methods with no method signatures. - If VS10 is not the active window but still visible, hovering a method shows the "built-in" tool tip. - Can the expanded tool tip show the XML documentation for each parameter? - Can the parameter type be shown next to the parameter to avoid expanding it to its type? - Can a button be included to cycle through just the overloads?
I completely agree with Philip and pat.kujawa. Within the interactive tooltip I truly miss the list of the exceptions a method throws. Also more info on overloads.
Would be great if you would implement these features.
I can create and compile a c++ test project. However, if VS 2010 is restarted and I try to load the test project solution, VS crashes. It works fine if the 'Productivity Power Tools' extension is disabled. I am using version 10.0.10725.12.
By default the tools bind to Ctrl-2 to show intellisense info. The binding is flawed so that also AltGr-2 is considered Ctrl-2. This causes a huge problem since AltGr-2 is @ character in the Finnish keyboard layout. Could this be fixed so that AltGr is NOT considered the same as Ctrl?
With Solution Navigator (SN) enabled, Intellisense is disabled. For example, in a code window, when I hover over "method" in "object.method", instead of getting an Intellisense pop-up, I get a Solution Navigator pop-up. Is this by design? If I turn Solution Navigator off, the Intellisense pop-up returns. I'm using VB; maybe this is just in VB and not C#?
There is the option to turn off the tool tips. From the menu select: Tools... Options.. Productivity Power Tools .... Solution Navigator and uncheck "Enable interactive tooltips"
I don't see that option. I'm using version 10.0.10710.22. I see Tools...Options...Productivity Power Tools. This shows on/off sliders. There is one for Solution Navigator. I can turn that off and it restores the tooltips but I lose the Solution Navigator window.
Under Productivity power tools there should be two "sub options" Namely -All Extensions -Solution Navigator It is under the solution Navigator option that you will find the option to turn off interactive tool tips.
Under C# I am having the exact opposite issue with both (intellsense and Solution Navigator) tooltips showing up and the intellsense tooltip covers up ( or is drawn on top of ) the solution navigator tooltip. Any ideas how to resolve this ? Thanks.
Under Productivity Tools I had two sub-items: All Extensions and Document Tab Well. I just upgraded to 10.0.10725.12 and now Solution Navigator shows as a third sub-item. I can now toggle off Interactive Tooltips.
When you have the document tab well enabled with tab sorting 'by project' and a lot (50+) of source files open, it takes a long time to start or stop debugging (or attach/detach) 15-30 seconds or more in some cases. The time taken goes up as the number of open source files goes up and devenv.exe uses 100% of one cpu core during this time.
Some sort of O(n^2) code running in the extension in response to the debug start/stop I would expect.
Otherwise a fabulous extension - the only other niggle is if you type '{<Enter>', you often have still down when pressing enter, which steps the insertion point *past* the automatically inserted close brace :(.
thanks,
Robin
The Add Reference Dialogue could not be shown due to the error: Null Reference.
Closing the Add Reference Dialogue while its refreshing/building the assembly list results in a NullReferenceException.
29/07/2010 6:06:32 PM System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AssemblyReferenceProvider.Dispose() at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AddReferenceDialog.AddReferenceDialogView_Closed(Object sender, EventArgs e) at System.Windows.Window.OnClosed(EventArgs e) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.PlatformUI.DialogWindowBase.OnClosed(EventArgs e) at System.Windows.Window.WmDestroy() at System.Windows.Window.WindowFilterMessage(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, Boolean& handled)
This is truly a great extension, and the new features in the latest update make it even more incredible--I would redouble my 5-star rating if I could. Thanks for taking my request to make control-click navigation more compatible with ctrl-dragging!
Since you guys are so awesome at improving Visual Studio's subtle annoyances, I have one more feature request for something that has been bothering me for some time:
I would love if the members drop-down menu for code files would list members in the order they are declared in the file. I find this significantly improves organization of code by promoting better ordering of member declarations within a code file. I remember back to my Mac programming days using CodeWarrior this is how the member menu was organized and I guarantee you my code files were significantly more organized back then.
On top of this, it would be great if one could see #region declarations in this menu as well, as well as the ability to add separators to the menu (CodeWarrior did this with "#pragma mark -" directives)--again this promotes organization of members by grouping related members/properties together.
Even just ordering it based on the order they appear in the code would be a significant improvement over alphabetical ordering.
In closing I would also like to second another user's suggestion of automatic namespace resolution (adding "using" directives automatically when there is only one choice of resolution). Coupled with automatic unused "using" cleanup, this could be a significant productivity enhancement.
You might want to take a look at the VS10x Code Map extension (http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/1c54d1bd-d898-4705-903f-fa4a319b50f2), it adds a collapsible sidebar to the editor which (by default) lists the members in the order they are declared in code. It also shows regions and has a few other cool features like showing which parts of the file you've visited recently.
Another one you might want to look at is PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2010 (http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/e5f41ad9-4edc-4912-bca3-91147db95b99). One of the commands it adds is "Remove and Sort Usings"; there is an option under PowerCommands > General to have the command execute automatically when you save a file.
Thanks Rory--I will try it out. It looks handy, but would be even better if it simply offered a quick-access menu. I don't have a lot of screen real estate for additional sidebars.
AltGr+2 "hijacking", now I'm not able to write "@" in the code editor
I love the extension but after the update I'm no longer able to write the @ sign (AltGr+2 on a danish keyboard) in the editor. How do I turn off this shortcut? I've looked in the keyboard configuration in the options window but it says the combination is not assigned to any command? Is it possible to turn off some other way?
Same problem here with the Finnish keyboard. Cannot type @ if Solution Navigator is enabled. It's supposed to hijack only Ctrl 2 but it seems to also hijack AltGr 2 (Ctrl Alt 2) :(
I use an alternate source control system, Mercurial, which integrates with VS via the extension Visual HG. This extension seems to be incompatible with Solution Navigator which is showing source control status icons which are incorrect. Solution Explorer still works as expected.
Once again a conflict with my (foreign) keyboard. When I press Crl+Alt+2 a dialog pops up with a class view. Usually on my keyboard, it's the "@" sign. But in the keyboard mapping options, there's no such command.
It would be so nice if you could bind keys to go the pinned tabs. For example, Ctrl-1 might activate the first pinned document, Ctrl-2 the second and so on.
I don't think the setup program should do the binding, I just think you should provide commands that would show up when customizing the keyboard (i.e. Window.ActivatePinnedTab1).
Pinning a document usually means that you want to go back to that document a lot. Having to use the mouse is slow and forces you to leave the keyboard.
Using new Add References dialog, I added a reference to a dll that's located inside of my solution (via the browse button). The new dialog added a line like this to the .csproj file:
I typed "debug" and saw a number of options - the first being "Attach to Process". Then I typed "exceptions" and out of habit (with Bing) hit Enter. At this point, the "Attach to Process" dialog came up. Yet, when I reopened Quick Access again the only entry in my MRU list was the "Change Exception Filters". It would appear that the MRU list was incorrect updated based on the current selection rather than what command was invoked.
For some reason I can't rename or delete certain files - even if I close all documents or they aren't actually inside my project. Its like the solution explorer hasn't realised its not debugging anymore..
System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x80020003): Member not found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80020003 (DISP_E_MEMBERNOTFOUND)) at System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.ThrowExceptionForHRInternal(Int32 errorCode, IntPtr errorInfo) at System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.ThrowExceptionForHR(Int32 errorCode) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.ErrorHandler.ThrowOnFailure(Int32 hr, Int32[] expectedHRFailure) at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.VisualStudio.GetDTEProject(IVsHierarchy hierarchy) at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.ProjectReferenceProvider..ctor(ResourceDictionary resources, IVsProgressPane progressPane, IVsHierarchy projectHierarchy, Dictionary`2 projectReferencePaths) at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AddReferenceDialog..ctor(IVsHierarchy projectHierarchy, DTE2 applicationObject) at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AddReferencePackage.ShowAddReferenceDialogOnIdle(IdleComponent idleComponent)
System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x80020003): Member not found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80020003 (DISP_E_MEMBERNOTFOUND)) at System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.ThrowExceptionForHRInternal(Int32 errorCode, IntPtr errorInfo) at System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.ThrowExceptionForHR(Int32 errorCode) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.ErrorHandler.ThrowOnFailure(Int32 hr, Int32[] expectedHRFailure) at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.VisualStudio.GetDTEProject(IVsHierarchy hierarchy) at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.ProjectReferenceProvider..ctor(ResourceDictionary resources, IVsProgressPane progressPane, IVsHierarchy projectHierarchy, Dictionary`2 projectReferencePaths) at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AddReferenceDialog..ctor(IVsHierarchy projectHierarchy, DTE2 applicationObject) at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AddReferencePackage.ShowAddReferenceDialogOnIdle(IdleComponent idleComponent)
Filtering Solution Navigator for "Edited" is Showing Duplicates
I'm really starting to like the solution navigator. Unfortunately I ran across an issue with the filter capability. When I filtered to show just the edited files, I am getting a bunch of duplicates, some of the edited files are repeated as many as 4 times, others are not repeated at all. This is potentially a very useful feature, but with the duplication it is difficult to use.
Is there a way to revert this back to the standard functionality without disabling/uninstalling. This is a show stopper for me. I use Ctrl+Drag all the time to copy code.
I have used Philip's workaround and that indeed disables the GoToDef functionality. However, I still have the issue that holding the control key down initially and then trying to drag selected text simply extends the selection.
With the new version of the Productivity Power Tools, we've actually changed the behaviour of the Ctrl Click extension so that it should be less likely to interfere with Ctrl Drag (it only navigates on MouseUp). Please let us know if that fixes the issue for you.
is it possible to color Tabs via RegExp on Project Name? We have 3-layered development, each layer has similar name across many modules. Current regexp seems to work only on filename :( and project colors are based on solution order, not usable for us :(
Yes, it is possible. Please check out this blog post, and look for "Regular Expression Options", to make regular expressions match the full document path: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2010/06/21/document-well-2010-plus-hidden-options.aspx
Visual Studio 2010 Professional 10.0.30319.1 RTMRel, Visual Studio crash immediately after Quick Access finds string. When I press Ctrl+3 (shortcut for Quick Access) and start to find string, that is not in my code (for example "blahblah") everything seems works fine. Serching string, that is in my code (for example "static") causes Visual Studio crasch - no search results are displayed before crasch.
With a VB project, expanding a form or user control doesn't show any members that are in the code file, instead it is limited to those in the .designer.vb file. So it isn't really possible to navigate your own code, only the designer generated code in these cases.
"Unknown Error" after installing the last update of "Productivity Power Tool"
Hi, I've just installed the last version of Productivity Power Tool on VS2010 (with VS2010 update), but after the update, VS2010 Cannot start and give me back a messageBox with an "Unknown error". Please help me!
I have the same problem. If I restart then it appears that I can open 1 instance of VS2010 before it starts happening again. Even tried the /safemode switch.
After upgrading to version 10.0.10710.22, VS2010 Devenv is crashing in my machine.
To repro here, I just create a new project, then right-click on the References folder, and select "Add new Reference". A few seconds after the new references dialog is shown, VS2010 crashes.
I've just found that in the event log.
Application: devenv.exe Framework Version: v4.0.30319 Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception. Exception Info: System.Security.SecurityException Stack: at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowSecurityException(System.ExceptionResource) at Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey.OpenSubKey(System.String, Boolean) at Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey.OpenSubKey(System.String) at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.TypeLibraryReferenceProvider.PopulateTypeLibraries(System.Object) at System.Threading.QueueUserWorkItemCallback.WaitCallback_Context(System.Object) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(System.Threading.ExecutionContext, System.Threading.ContextCallback, System.Object, Boolean) at System.Threading.QueueUserWorkItemCallback.System.Threading.IThreadPoolWorkItem.ExecuteWorkItem() at System.Threading.ThreadPoolWorkQueue.Dispatch() at System.Threading._ThreadPoolWaitCallback.PerformWaitCallback()
"Unknown Error" after installing the last update of "Productivity Power Tool"
Hi, I've just installed the last version of Productivity Power Tool on VS2010 (with VS2010 update), but after the update, VS2010 Cannot start and give me back a messageBox with an "Unknown error". Please help me!
Love the extension but here's how it could be improved. Icons on all tabs useless, it add clutter. However, icons on rare types, that's useful. I think saying simply show icons on tabs not .cs or .xaml would be enough. It would let us quickly identify .sql or .csproj files.
A gradient on the tab colours would be nice and the current tab needs to stand out more.
The Align by needs to be more powerful, I've been using a macro for years. I have tool buttons for '=', '==', 'm_', '"', '.', ' ', and one which pops a dlg and asks what you want to align by.
Regarding gradients and the selected tab standing out more, please look at the following blog post: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2010/06/21/document-well-2010-plus-hidden-options.aspx
I was able to use the registry settings to get flat custom colors for all the tabs except the selected tab, which used the default VS yellow (I think the combination was ForceFlatColors=True and UseCustomColorForSelected=False). The latest version (10.0.10710.22) now seems to ignore the UseCustomColorForSelected setting and always displays the selected tab with a gradient from the custom color to the default yellow color. Is there a way to get the old behavior back? (I know, some people are never happy.)
I know why I couldn't find it at first. The Advanced page doesn't appear until you set HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\DialogPage\Microsoft.DocWellBehavior.GeneralOptions\ShowAllPages to "True".
I have found that when I attempt to load the Project Properties of any web application when I am using the Productivity Power Tools that VS will take about 5 minutes to fully load the properties page.
Anyone else seeing this?
Bug: Solution Navigator when working with InstallShield Le Project
Thanks for the update to the power tools, some useful stuff.
However, while I like the concept of the Colorized Parameter Help, I have been disabling it from Tools-Options as it doesn't show type for local variables without having to drill down - a major oversight I think, if you use a lot of anonymous types...
Today VS crashed Windows 7 with a blue screen, and now I cannot disable colorized parameter help at all. I can change the setting and restart VS but it just won't go away. Have tried reinstalling extension and resetting all my settings, none of which works.
Thanks so much for posting this. I didn't think of looking in the Solution Navigator settings for something like this. My main issue is the conflict with Reshaper; the interactive tooltip pops up and is immediately mostly hidden by the Resharper tooltip. Doesn't crash or anything; it was just annoying!
Automatic Brace Completion breaks IntelliSense and Unablke to Close Double Quotes
Did a search but didn't notice anyone other posts about this one. If I pin a couple of tabs and then try to drag them around then I get a crash every time.
Hi fowlert, Can you send us a callstack of the crash you are seeing? If you have any doubts about how to do this, please check out this blog post: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kirillosenkov/archive/2010/02/08/how-to-investigate-and-report-visual-studio-issues.aspx Or let us know directly at: docwell2010plus [at] microsoft . com
Argh...of course now that I go to crash it on purpose it won't. I know when it was crashing that I had on sorting of tabs alphabetically. I realized later that when that option is on you can't drag around any tabs at all (at first I thought it was just the pinned tabs you couldn't drag around) so I turned it off. Putting it back on and trying to reproduce the crash still isn't doing it though. I'll submit a report if I hit it again.
Love the new Add Reference Dialog but there is a significant bug. (Significant to me at atleast).
You cannot add a reference to a specific file system based assembly if that assembly is also in your GAC. It will always add the GAC reference.
To be honest - not entirely sure that is what is happening so I'll explain my scenario: I have Blend installed and had a reference to the Expression.Interaction dll - but it originally got added to point to c:\program files\... For our solution we have a Reference folder for third party dlls. I keep trying to browse to the dll in that folder, but this new Add References dialog keeps adding it as coming from c:\program files\... I had to disable the extension and use the old Add References dialog. (I don't like editing project files directly)
I have the same issue. Adding reference to a local dll (that is checked in the source control) skips the hint path if it is found in the gac. This will fail the build if another developer tries to get the source and compile if it hasn't the dll in the gac. Will disable this Power Tools to get the old behaviour back. Hopefully a patch will be issued sometime??
Power tools for studio 2010 is great but I have a massive issue! When I try to type the "|" character (quiet usefull when we develop in C#), I have a popup to search something instead. For your information, I have a belgian keyboard, and on such keyboard, to have "|", we must do AltGr + 1 (that is Ctrl + Alt + 1). To avoid that behavior, I'm compelled to desactivate the Solution Navigator. Apparently, this shotcut is hard coded and hooked by the solution navigator: in the visual studio keyboard manager, the shortcut Ctrl+Alt+1 is not used by any action. And no custom action exists for studio power tools. Did I miss something?
tab well: disappearing text and other strange behavior
after some time using the tab well in a given project, after a random time, the text of the current document disappears, the VS2010 menus opens at the top right or left of the window instead of their correct location, and sometimes the toolboxes windows stays in the middle of the screen after the window is maximized.
These symptoms appeared on different machines (Win 7 x64/4Go, Win vista x32 2Go, Win 7 x32/2Go).
The only way to get things straight back is to clic any "pin" button in the tab well to pin a tab. the pinned tab is then moved to the separate tab bar and all works nicely.
I have R# 5.1 but disabling it didn't change anything, and one of the machine does not have R#. I disabled all other extensions and it still happened.
I hoped someone will write that report in the review but noone seems to care ? Any idea how to fix that ?
I installed the latest version of the extension on my VS2010 Premium. It installed OK but when I run Visual Studio as administrator it crashes a few seconds after startup. Anyone else having the same problem and/or know a fix?
I'm sorry that you are having problems with the Power Tools. You should be able to run Visual Studio in Safe Mode (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms241278.aspx) which will allow you to go to the Extension Manager and disable the extension. Once you have done that, could you let me know if you have any other extensions (or anything unique about your configuration) that might be causing the issue?
I have the same problem. VS2010 Ultimate crashes if I install the latest version on Win7 x64. Previous version worked fine. Also installed it on a machine with Vista Ultimate x86 where it works fine. Both systems have UAC turned off and I am logged in as admin.
Thanks Thomas
Default Highlight Current Line colour is very similar to Brace Matching colour
I find the interactive tool tips very helpful. However, the Visual Studio Quick info tool tip covers up the interactive tool tip. So how can I disable the visual studio quick info tool tip, preferably without disabling intellesense.
Trying to use Quick Access to open a specific page in the options dialog (e.g. Fonts and Colors) has no effect when the option is selected with the Enter key (other than closing the QA window) and causes the IDE to crash if you click on the item. Seems to work for other things like menu items.
I'm able to type in "fonts" (Environment->Fonts and Colors) is highlighted and press Enter and it takes me directly to the options page. Can you send a mail to westonh AT microsoft.com and I'll give you instructions to upload a crash dump so we can further debug the issue?
Love the ctrl-click feature but would love to choose a different key. Just typing in the editor and hitting the ctrl-key will of course highlight text based on where the mouse is, which is distracting, but a bigger issue for me is that I frequently ctrl-clicked to grab the whole word.
After last update i seen changing of tab color - selected tab has gardient color. How I make selected tab color non-gradient? Old behavior was more readable and comfort for look.
Hi, Please take a look at this blog post to see how you can return to the old behavior: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2010/06/21/document-well-2010-plus-hidden-options.aspx Thanks!
Problem with Solution Navigator window in Full Screen mode
I just found another problem with Solution Navigator window. While it is open at the right hand side, if you move to full screen mode of VS2010, the window remains at the right side. It never hides like other window like Solution Explorer, Property Window etc.
Hope you will fix it in the next release.
Problem with Solution Navigator Tooltip and Resharper Tooltip
First of all I want to admit it is an awesome extension, fully 10/10. But while using it along with resharper 5.1 I am facing some compatibility issue. Things like Solution Navigator tooltip and resharper tooltip; both are coming at same place while hovering over the code and resharper is overriding the solution navigator. Can you guys please do something so that I can use both the features without problem. Honestly I can't give up resharper, but I want to use this extension also as well. I am eagerly waiting for a solution.
The sorting of projects in the Solution Navigator seems broken. I have a solution with 21 projects, separated among 3 solution folders. The order in which the projects are listed in the Solution Navigator does not match the order of the Solution Explorer (which is alphabetical). The solution folders themselves appear in the correct alphabetical order.
In fact, I have re-opened my solution and the order of projects has /changed/, which is even worse than incorrect-but-stable sorting.
Sorry about this problem! In the current version, contents of Solution Folders aren't being sorted correctly, and are displayed in the order the solution returns them in (which may be arbitrary). We will get this fixed for the next release.
I found a bug in Solution Navigator (Productivity Power Tools)(10.0.10710.22)
When press Collapse All button (second in top of Solution Navigator window) filter "Open" for solution work incorrect, it display full project structure but must be empty.
I've just updated to the new version, and love the changes. However, I've had to disable automatic brace completion because it appears to screw with intellisense.
For an example, if you have a function which takes an enum as an argument, the normal behaviour is to open the intellisense window and navigate to the enum, so you can just type . followed by the enum member name. However, with automatic brace completion enabled, the intellisense window is opened, but remains at the top of the list. I suspect this has something to do with the extension moving the cursor in order to add the closing brackets.
Are you using WindowsXP? If so there is a known issue with the Productivity Power Tools having too long of a name when you take into account the contents of the zip file. We've shortened the names so you should be able to install now. There is also a workaround mentionned below to rename the .vsix to .zip and install it to the correct location under AppData.
Thanks! -Sean
Why Power Tools ignore custom color for selected tab
After install the Update this morning, Power Tools ignore the colour settings: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2010/06/21/document-well-2010-plus-hidden-options.aspx#customcolorforselected
Similar for me: Something wrong with selected tab color. I have ForceFlatColors=true and UseCustomColorForSelected=false, and my selected tab has gradient effect but other buttons have flat color.
1 to this. I'm greatly annoyed by the fact it didn't keep the tab colors as always. Now it's with an awful blue with yellow gradient which I dislike a lot. Why couldn't it be left as it was, and add an option to change it? now not even registry settings work :/...
The changes made to the default tab color for the selected tab made me have to change this registry key. Sorry about that. I will be updating the blog post soon with this change. In the meantime, please try running the command below. It will have the same effect as the old registry key, using default VS colors for the selected tab:
reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\DialogPage\Microsoft.DocWellBehavior.ColorGeneralOptions /v SelectedOption /t REG_SZ /d VS /f
When using this extension it breaks the WinForms designer in the following scenario: - I got a solution with two projects: Utilities and Application - Application has a reference to the solution-local project Utilities - In Application I have a UserControl which uses classes from Utilities - In Application I have a Form which uses the locally defined UserControl
Now if I try to open this Form in the WinForms designer the UserControl throws an exception failing to load the Utilities assembly. If I disable the extension I can open the designer without problems.
Not related but I didn't feel like making a new entry for this: If I close the AddRefereceDialog while it is still building the global assembly list there is a non-fatal NullReferenceException. I'm referred to a log which says:
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AssemblyReferenceProvider.Dispose() at Microsoft.VSProjectPlus.AddReferenceDialog.AddReferenceDialogView_Closed(Object sender, EventArgs e) plus a lot more stack probably not relevant
Problem with Add Reference dialog if # is in the file path
I ran into a COM error in the Pro Power Tools Add Reference dialog box when the reference I want to add has a # in the file path. The standard dialog box works as expected. See
Josh, We just released a new version of the Productivity Power Tools that should address this problem. Please let us know if that doesn't fix it for you.
I just saw the update and that you now support auto brace completion but only for VB and C#. If I may, I'd like to recommend implementing something like this for javascript. I generally switch between VS and Aptana because I when I write javascript, Aptana's auto brace completion is far superior. Take a look at theirs, it is really good. Is there another extension that does this or is this something that can be built into Productivity Power Tools?
Issue with Add Reference -- how to disable feature
Our shop ran across a potential issue with the Add Reference replacement in Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power Tools when dealing with signed assemblies -- at least we assume that's the issue as this only started happening when we changed our subordinate assemblies to signed. It seems that when the version number of the assembly doesn’t change it will use a “cached” location instead of the location you tell it.
Anyone else seen this issue and know more? Perhaps there's an easier way to turn this feature off? Meanwhile, we've been just disabling the Add Reference replacement as follows:
1. In Visual Studio 2010 go to: Tools Extension Manager 2. Select “Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power Tools 3. Press the [Disable] button & close all instances of Visual Studio 2010 4. Open Windows Explorer and go to (obviously substituting your network username):
C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR_USER_NAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Extensions\Microsoft\Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power Tools\10.0.10608.1630
6. Restart Visual Studio 2010 and go to Tools Extension Manager 7. Select “Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power Tools 8. Select “Enable” and then hit the button at bottom of dialog to Restart Visual Studio 2010.
There is an issue where the new Add Reference dialog doesn't add the HintPath to the Project file correctly under certain circumstances. We are working on a fix for this issue (and options to disable individual extensions) for the next release.
Hi Alexander, I'm sorry that you are getting a crash with the Productivity Power Tools. Are you able to send me the callstack for the VS Crash that you are seeing? If not, please send me an email (seanla @ microsoft dot com) and I'll send instructions on how to get the crash dump and send it to us.
Collapse All isn't a feature of Visual Studio 2010 but rather has been provided by several extensions. Can you let us know which extension that you have so that we can track down the problem?
1. The message bar allowing to "Fix Mixed Tabs" always pops up, even on source files, I must not change, so I wanted to switch off this feature. I did this in the settings (Productivity Power Tools/All Extensions) and restarted VS2010, but the message bar comes up again and again. What is do be done to fix this? 2. What's about configuring some directories or directory patterns, specifying a kind of white list for files, where the "Fix Mixed Tabs" feature should be available? Or what's about enabling the "Fix Mixed Tabs" feature only in files, that are changed, and not yet saved?
When we "switch off" an extension via the Tools Options, we actually rename the dll on disk so there should be no chance of it loading. Can you check to see if you have the Noah Richards version of this installed in the Extension Manager as well?
If not, can you check in your app data folder to see if the assembly was renamed? On my machine, you will find the Power Tools are installed to: C:\Users\<username>\appdata\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Extensions\Microsoft\Productivity Power Tools\10.0.10710.22. You should see that FixMixedTabsProPack.dll is renamed to FixMixedTabsProPack.dll.disabled.
Thanks for the update! it's gust great! I raised my vote to 5!! Thanks for making the classes browsable in the sln exp. like eclipse, I replaced it with the old Solution-Explorer for good! I think many ppl will reconsider getting VS just because of this project, no question about it!
Here is a few more suggestions:
- Make different symbols for private/public/abstract/sealed etc. members, class/structure/enum/delegate/interface/event/static class/module should have different signs as well in both VB and C#.
- Specific coloring for namespace/struct/enum/module/delegate/interface/delegate/user type/event/method names, for both VB and C# (should all be customizable from the "Font and Color" options for both VB and C#).
- Local variables should appear bold, static (vb: shared) members should be italic.
- An intellisense items filter for all code types like Karl Shifflett's xaml intellisense filter.
- Include the updated version of the 'Fix Mixed Tabs' by Noah Richards (visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/91a3f8ae-3152-438a-b5fc-fb37878dd007) in the bundle, the old one has a bug.
- mouse wheel scrolling does not work when the mouse is just placed over the navigator, it needs to be selected (works fine with the solution explorer). - the fixed top area should be separated from the scrolling area by placing at least a one pixel horizontal line in between.
I'll write it here. My "problem"/wish is, tooltip with fullname come faster. We have pretty long filenames (same first 30chars). Solution Explorer shows tooltip immediately as I run mouse over files, but in Navi it take time at every single item to shows up :/ I like Navi more than Explorer, but in work comp it is very ineffiency.
I constantly keep on receiving a pop-up message that offers: "You have mixed tabs and spaces. Fix this?" that let's me choose between Tabify, Untabify and "Don't show again", but even I choose the last option, they do show up over and over and drive me sick.
I want to either completely disable this feature or to fix the whole project for good, but not receive 5 messages per minute.
I have the same problem. And it started to appear after I installed this extension. I even don't have any other extension installed so this must be this extensions fault.
What's more. We do have insonsistencies in tabs/spaces and want to keep them. Also we have lots of files so I don't want to disable it for each file separately.
@Adam, This is caused by Fix Mixed Tabs, by Noah Richards, which is included in the bundle. Best thing is install the new version Noah posted from http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/91a3f8ae-3152-438a-b5fc-fb37878dd007, this overrides the old version included in the pack, I tried this and it works. I don't know if the updated version of the 'Fix Mixed Tabs' extension is included in the Productivity Power Tools ver. 10.0.10710.22.
I find that this feature has the potential to be amazing, but at my first use I noticed that the assignment happens within logical statements such as if-else statements. I am unsure if this is the desired use. I find that this is not the use I would like for this feature. I would love to be able to align assignments that are not within the conditions for logical statements.
1) Scrollable tabs - make them scrollable by mouse scroll. 2) Fix all bugs listed here and in discussions on original extensions:) 3) Fix GoToDef! There're at least 5 negative feedbacks on it. 3.1) Please, navigate on mouse up (as ALL hyperlinks and button-like controls work). 3.2) Please do not navigate as mouse move exceeds os-defined drag threschold value. 3.3) Add ability to disable it. 4) Nest all (excluding fonts & colors-related) settings into single PowerTools node (as PowerCommands do).
As above: 'Fix tabs reordering by drag-drop when in vertical layout.' Would definitely like to be able to sort documents within a grouped set of vertical tabs.
Please look at this blog post to see how you can put tabs on the right of the document well: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2010/06/21/document-well-2010-plus-hidden-options.aspx Other issues are being worked on, soon you should see an updated version published here.
Remove the 'Add guideline' feature from the context menu
1. Click on Tools in the main menu 2. Select "Customize..." 3. Select the "Commands" tab 4. Select the "Context menu" radio button 5. Select "Editor Context Menus|Code Window" from the "Context menu:" dropdown. 6. Scroll down the list of controls to find "Add guideline", "Remove guideline", "Guideline color..." 7. For each control, select it and click "Delete" 8. Click "Close"
So I accidentially clicked the "Add guideline" in the context menu, and now I'm not able to remove it. When I right-click it, the remove option is always disabled. Considering that guidelines is not something you constantly add and remove, my I also suggest that this is NOT available in the context menu. That menu is clogged with plenty of stuff as it is, and adding 3 more options doesn't really help my productivity.
I also noticed that guidelines cannot be removed and apparently do not appear in the correct location. I ended up renaming the guidelines DLL to disable that part of the plugin.
I notice that there is a disabled Remove option, but I can't figure out what I select to enable the command. For example, selecting all of the code in the module still doesn't enable the Remove option.
To add or remove a guideline, the caret must first be placed in the correct column. Use the read-out on the status bar to track the column number.
If all else fails, you can remove all guidelines by removing the "Guides" value under the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Text Editor
I know of a few bugs with add/remove and they've been fixed in a more recent version. I've also moved the commands onto a sub-menu so that you are less likely to choose them accidentally. Unfortunately, I do not know when the next Pro Power Tools bundle update is going to be pushed out.
The guideline does not use the column (Col) but character (Ch) value, so a "Tab" is counted as 1. To place or remove guidelines place the caret must be placed on the spot the Ch property (displayed in the status-bar of VS2010) displays the value you want it displayed.
If you want the guideline in column 4 and the row starts with: "<Tab><Tab>public" you want the caret between the 'u' and the 'b'.
The options to tweak the Colourised Parameter Help only change the background - so changing the foreground won't effect it. This means that matching it exactly to your theme may not be the best, try a lighter background colour for the parameter help to make it more readable.
It would be nice if ALL the tools in this collection where available as separate extensions. So basically I can choose from the current 11 and only have the ones I want. Short of this, I would then want to have an master options screen that lets me enable/disable the tools in this extension. This way if there are issues with ones with bugs they can be disabled until fixed so that we can still enjoy the other tools, or if we just don't want something we can disable if it is annoying the user. Example of this could be the Highlight Current Line. There is no way to disable this you would have to change the colors so they match the default text, however that doesn't fix it for when it is on comments etc, so some people I know hate this part of the set and want to turn it off but they can't. I personally like it and changed the colors to match my theme and I am very happy.
Regardless putting together a large collection like this is great, but not having control over what is enabled/disabled or installed/not installed is frustrating.
It problem is since i installed then I can no longer do multi-line selection using the standard keyboard operations. I used to be able to hold the control key down and move the arrow keys up and down and it would start selecting the lines from where the cursor is. However after installing this add it only moves the cursor up and down without selecting anything. It is as if the CTRL key is being ignored for up and down (left and right work).
I am not sure which tool in the collection here is causing it but I would suspect that it is either Highlight Current Line or Move Line Up/Down Commands. I used to have Highlight Current Line installed without Pro Power Tools and never had this issue so unless it is now conflicting with something, something changed or it is a different tool in the collection I don't know.
I do know that I love the TAB changes however I am going to have to uninstall Pro Power Tools because I cannot function without my keyboard commands working as expected.
NOTE: I confused Highlight Current Line with some other extension, this is the first time I have used HCL ignore the parts above where I mention using it before the Pro Power Tools. :)
UPDATE: This issue seems to come and go, and I have a work around when it does develop. For some reason on a single editor tab, not all, this issue happens and when it does if I close the file/tab and reopen it the selection starts working again. I am happy I can easily workaround the issue if it happens, and also that it doesn't happen on all of them at the same time.
It would be nice to have tabs span multiple lines instead of having the drop down list. Even better would be the max number of rows being a user configurable setting and then when it goes over that the drop down then shows up as it currently works.
I like the pinning tabs and I am using this to get around the multi-line tabs, however if you change this to have multi-lines I think the pinning should be configurable as well so that the pinned tab either stays where it is and never moves as tabs change around it or it goes to the first line and the pinned ones are sorted using the sorting options.
If you use a dark background theme the Colorized Parameter screws up the Help. It uses the same foreground colours as the editor but keeps a white background. so most of it doesn't show up at all, and the rest is barely readable. Is there a way to turn this off?
jQuery -vsdocs.js and the Signature Help Tooltip Background & dark theme
I was trying to use the tool top help that the 'vsdocs' version of jQuery gives you in the VS2010 HTML editor, unfortunately, I have a dark background theme for syntax highlighting and my jQuery help text was appearing as bright yellow on a white background.
I had this same issue before with normal signature help tooltips, but that was solved by changing the Signature Help Tooltip Background (or some similar name) in the Fonts and Colors options - is there a similar setting for the help background for .js in the HTML editor?? (note that server C# code in <% %> looks fine - just like the source code editor sig help).
Has it ever occurred to you that some users might want certain features but not others? For example, I might want the tab handling, without the hassle of losing my ALT+DOWN combo to show my errors list. Why isn't this add-in customisable in any way? Why, indeed, does it flagrantly override the keyboard settings in Visual Studio, irrespective of the wishes of the user?
Indeed, for one of Microsoft's own add-ins, such behaviour is unforgivable. Why offer keyboard customisation and then blatantly ignore the user's settings? Very bad design.
In this first release of the Pro Power Tools it isn't possible to turn off features individually. However, if you read these posts you'll find innovative ways to do this manually :). In the next release of the tools we’ll provide a way to turn features on/off.
Some background. Each of the features started out life as an individual extension that could be installed stand-alone and turned on/off. I wanted to say "Install this one extension and it will give you a bunch of new features that you will love". I didn’t want to say “go find 20 extensions, install them and then uninstall the 3 you don't like.” Given this is what I want for packaging, I could do it two ways:
1. Package each extension into a single VSIX that contains a other VSIXs. When you install the main VSIX, each extension is installed and the Extension Manager shows each. You could enable/disable each one. Sounds good, but if you uninstall one it does not uninstall the others and warns that there are dependencies. The dependency is on the main VSIX and if you uninstall that none of the individual extensions are uninstalled. Unfortunately, this is a limitation of the Extension Manager.
2. Build all of the extensions into one VSIX. Install one thing, Ext Mgr shows one thing, uninstall is one thing. This is the experience that I wanted. The problem is you don’t have control over each extension so if you don't like one you are either stuck.
I decided to go with option #2 knowing that we would have an extension to easily turn individual features on/off and make it easy for our team to add Tools|Options for each. I realize this decision caused problems for some but in the long run I think it will be a better overall acquisition and customization experience.
My hope is to get this next release of the tools out in a few weeks. We're working on them now and we've got a few more bug fixes and some validation to do before we can post them.
I haven't nailed down what is causing the conflict yet, but when this item is enabled the "Add Reference" dialog is broken. More to the point, I can't get it to appear. I get a brief spin cursor and then nothing.
I was having the same problem, but I narrowed it down to the Web Deployment Project. As soon as I removed that project from the solution, the Add Reference dialog starting showing up.
Install Error : System.IO.PathTooLongException: The specified path, file name, or both are too long. The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters, and the directory name must be less than 248 characters.
Hi, I have the same error message on all our WinXP Computers. On Win7 Ultimate with VS 2010 Pro it works. On WinXP Pro SP3 with VS 2010 Pro it fails.
Here is the error log: 22.06.2010 17:24:36 - Microsoft Visual Studio Extension Installer ... 22.06.2010 17:24:36 - Searching for applicable products... 22.06.2010 17:24:37 - Found installed product - Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional 22.06.2010 17:24:37 - The extension with ID 'VSProPack.Microsoft.f4ef2e6e-e531-48d5-940d-eb955306da9a' is not installed to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional. 22.06.2010 17:24:38 - The following target products have been selected... 22.06.2010 17:24:38 - Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional 22.06.2010 17:24:38 - 22.06.2010 17:24:38 - Beginning to install extension to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional... 22.06.2010 17:24:39 - Install Error : System.IO.PathTooLongException: The specified path, file name, or both are too long. The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters, and the directory name must be less than 248 characters. at Microsoft.VisualStudio.ExtensionManager.ExtensionManagerService.BeginInstall(IInstallableExtension installableExtension, Boolean perMachine, AsyncOperation asyncOp) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.ExtensionManager.ExtensionManagerService.InstallWorker(IInstallableExtension extension, Boolean perMachine, AsyncOperation asyncOp)
I hope you can fix this problem, because most of our development machines are still WinXP.
Based on the error log, it looks like our install path is too long when your username is added to the path. I'll see what we can do about shortening the path of the next version so that we can avoid this for most users.
In the meantime, you can workaround this by downloading the .vsix from the Visual Studio Gallery and renaming its extension to .zip. From there you should be able to extract it to a path similar to: (C:\Documents and Settings\seanla\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Extensions\Microsoft\PPT\10.0.10623 ) with the last two folders renamed to something shorter if necessary.
Bruno PS: you can see a more detailed description in http://geeks.ms/blogs/elbruno/archive/2010/06/25/vs2010-visual-studio-pro-power-tools-cuidado-con-el-add-references.aspx
Aaron Marten previously posted this way to disable it (though the crashing issue is now fixed). Please let us know if there is an issue with the latest version so that we can work on addressing it.
-Sean Laberee
In the meantime, you can disable the auto-check for updates on startup (which is the culprit causing the crash) by running the following command from a Windows command prompt:
Hi, cool stuff also I get an error when trying to add references to COM type libraries (Library not registered Exception from HRESULT 0x8002801D). When disabled the VS 2010 Pro Power Tools, adding the reference to the same COM type lib works as expected.
Is there a way you can manually install the Power Tool add-on, without having to go online through Visual Studio? Like >> My computer >> (C:) >> Program... So on soo on? IE, in Visual Studio is messing up and I am not able to connect to the internet through the program.
The download link at the top of this page will let you save this as a file on your computer. You can then double-click it to launch the VSIX Installer without going through the Visual Studio Extension Manager.
After I install this extenstion, my VS just crashes on startup every time. When it happens, I can choose to use "Visual Stuido 2010" to debug it but the debugger also crashes. Even though I saw the exception, it's an AggregateException. No detail is provided.
Any one who can help me? I've managed to disable the extension now, but I hope I can use it.
Gildor, can you use the /log switch and post the ActivityLog.xml here? http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kirillosenkov/archive/2010/02/08/how-to-investigate-and-report-visual-studio-issues.aspx
Thanks for letting us know about the crash. There will be an update addressing the issue pushed out shortly. In the meantime, you can disable the auto-check for updates on startup (which is the culprit causing the crash) by running the following command from a Windows command prompt:
Hi, VS crashes every time I open Add Reference window. Assemblies/Framework tab is empty and I get System.AggregateException with inner exception: CultureNotFoundException "Culture is not supported.Parameter name: name Neutral is an invalid culture identifier."
I thought that maybe the reference cache is corrupted, can u please tell me where it's located? Maybe deleting it (rebuilding it) could help? I tried reinstalling Pro Power Tools but with no luck.
On a Windows7 box, you can find the files here: C:\Users\<<username>>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0
They are all xml files that begin with the framework name. If this does fix the issue, can you attach your cache files to an email to me? seanla @ microsoft . com.
I couldn't find a setting to disable it in favor of the infinitely more useful CTRL+Click to hilight a word to copy so I had to manually disable it.
Why would you want to disable this? F12 already takes care of this feature (or it can be mapped to do so) and holding the CTRL key down and using the click, V, click, C, click, V, click, C, ... combination for copying code, variables, etc around is used more often. You don't even need to let up on the CTRL key.
Steps: 1. Close all Visual Studio instances. 2. On Windows Server 2008 R2 (Possibly Windows 7): Rename the GoToDefProPack.dll to GoToDefProPack.old_dll at this location: C:\Users\<your user name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Extensions\Microsoft\Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power Tools\10.0.10602.2200 (For Windows XP can someone check this out and post the real path? Start looking in "Documents and Settings" and "Local Settings" I think.) 3. Restart VS.
Resharper also has a feature like this mapped to CTRL+Click but they have an option to disable it.
Is there really no easier way to do this? It should be an option somewhere (although I also couldn't find it). I agree, CTRL Click is extremely useful to me to select a word to copy.
1: I like most other features of this extension, but really prefer Ctrl-Click to mean "Select Word". I'm close to uninstalling the whole thing, but maybe I'll try Philip's workaround for now...
For the workaround, the path on XP is: C:\Documents and Settings\<your user name>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Extensions\Microsoft\Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power Tools\10.0.10602.2200
I always use double-click to select words. I use refactoring to rename identifiers.
I would just be happy if control-clicking a non-hyperlinked item (like a language keyword) had the old behaviour, or at least ignored the click and didn't put up modal dialog box.
BTW, I also discovered by accident that having the Goto Definition extension installed but disabled turned off the ctrl-click feature of this extension as well.
I also vote to change this Ctrl Click to be configurable, Or just change to something else that's not conflict with existing gesture. Maybe Ctrl Alt Click? looks in the family of Ctrl Alt [ shortcuts.
I also wish there's a centric place to set these options. There's a Tab well configuration in Tools->Options, but everthing else are scattered all over the places.
I agree about a centric place for the options. If this is an extension and not a service pack, then make a separate place to control the options. Don't integrate them.
Yes! I agree about to make a single node in Options Dialog. The other Extension such as Resharper support this feature too, but it can be closed in Resharper! If the single option panel released, I will use this tool in my full team. I like this extension very much.
I couldn't disagree more with the utility of Ctrl Click for navigate as opposed to select word - double-click, like in most other windows apps is my preferred method to achieve that behavior.
I also couldn't agree more that the behavior should be configurable, or at the very least disable-able.
This bug occurs after you try to copy code when a local web server is running and changes are not permitted to be made (code is in read-only mode).
1. Open a C# web app project. 2. Press F5 to run it. 3. After it's started, go to a cs file and press control + x to cut some code. A popup window appears saying you can't makes changes while code is running. 4. Push shift + F5 to stop the local server. 5. Go back to your cs file and click on some whitespace. You'll get the error "Cannot navigate to definition. The cursor is not on a symbol."
This is a very annoying bug. Please fix it!
Feature Request: Close all non-pinned tabs command
Yeah I've wanted this too. I keep Source Control Explorer, History and Pending Changes always open. My habit from before the tab well was to use Window | Close All Documents command to close everything. Now I've taken to left-aligning my tabs and displaying the [X] on each tab so I can click the mouse in-place to close the unpinned ones.
Actually i was going to request the same feature. It would be really helpful to have only one command to close all other tabs that are not pinned since you could have only the files that you're working with active, and since sometimes you open some other files to copy paste some code from them, but if
If you open other tabs frecuently to copy paste some code from them , they tend to remain open. Since finding a tab between many open documents slows you down they might be left opened. But then when you want to return to one of the tabs you're working on, you have to find between temporary tabs and pinned tabs. So by having this command you could just close all the temporary (unpinned) tabs and just keep the important (pinned) ones.
Is there any way to disable the new Add Reference dialog? We've been having issues where it's getting confused on the reference to add. It seems to work fine if we disable the hole extension, but I'd rather just disable the new add reference dialog if possible.
Can anybody tell me where I can change the bright blue color that is used with the CTRL-CLICK functionality please? It looks very garish on a dark background. Thanks.
Please can we have an option to have CTRL-CLICK use a different key? I would personaly like ALT-CLICK. As others have pointed out, CTRL-CLICK can get in the way of other operations like copy/paste and when I press CTRL-S to save I don't want the code under my cursor flashing blue!
'Add' button placement in add reference dialog is somewhat ambiguous
If one adds references by double clicking, then wanting to close the window by habit we hit the left most button at bottom of dialog, which is usually an OK type button, here it is the Add button, this creates problems. Also: - running in higher DPI modes, the dialog has some slight issues rendering scroll bars in the leftmost column. -Make ctrl-F focus to search bar!!! Great job otherwise!
Public Function SP(ByVal p1 As Guid, ByVal p2 As Guid, ByVal p3 As Guid, ByVal p4 As Guid, ByVal p5 As Guid, ByVal p6 As Guid, ByVal p7 As Guid, ByVal p8 As Guid, ByVal p9 As Guid, ByVal p10 As Guid, ByVal p11 As Guid, ByVal p12 As Guid, ByVal p13 As Guid, ByVal p14 As Guid, ByVal p15 As Guid, ByVal p16 As Guid, ByVal p17 As Guid, ByVal p18 As Guid, ByVal p19 As Guid, ByVal p20 As Guid, ByVal p21 As Guid, ByVal p22 As Guid, ByVal p23 As Guid, ByVal p24 As Guid, ByVal p25 As Guid, ByVal p26 As Guid, ByVal p27 As Guid, ByVal p28 As Guid, ByVal p29 As Guid, ByVal p30 As Guid, ByVal p31 As Guid, ByVal p32 As Guid, ByVal p33 As Guid, ByVal p34 As Guid, ByVal p35 As Guid, ByVal p36 As Guid, ByVal p37 As Guid, ByVal p38 As Guid, ByVal p39 As Guid, ByVal p40 As Guid, ByVal p41 As Guid, ByVal p42 As Guid, ByVal p43 As Guid, ByVal p44 As Guid, ByVal p45 As Guid, ByVal p46 As Guid, ByVal p47 As Guid, ByVal p48 As Guid) End Function
Ok you can see two problems: 1- Pressing left and right Arrow kb buttons is too slow! 2- You cannot see all function parameters, this problem in vs2010, and not in vs2008!! Thanks..
Just hit Ctrl C (the usual copy). You'll be able to paste into Windows Live Writer etc. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kirillosenkov/archive/2010/06/07/copy-code-in-html-format-with-visual-studio-2010.aspx
Thanks! Before I tested a paste into Notepad expecting to see HTML. I guess there is some Windows magic behind the scenes I was not aware of. Looking forward to the customization you mention in the blog. My code colors are all geared for a dark background, so I'd add some HTML to give it a dark background on the paste.
Indeed there is. In Windows the Copy/Paste buffer normally contains multiple versions of what you copied. (Most applications seem to offer a combination of plain text, rich text, and image-only.) When you paste, the target application decides which version it wants based on its capabilities.
I would like to turn off the current line highlighting, syntax highlighting in parameter help and retain the default tabs, while turning the rest of the features on. How do I do that?
If the current release does not support turning on features selectively, please consider releasing an update that does so, as soon as possible
To disable features that don't work properly or that you don't like, open C:\Users\<%Your Name%>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Extensions\Microsoft\Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power Tools\10.0.10608.1630\extension.vsixmanifest, find <Content> section and comment out the components you want to disable.
It's the most logical thing in the world really, and it's beyond silly that MS hasn't added it by default when they added the horizontal split view in VS 2010. (heck, even eclipse can do it)
It's the best use of available visual space, since you align most text/code to the left side of the screen.
But, since microsoft has been unforthcoming in this, perhaps it'd be possible to add this to the power tools?
It's already possible in the html view, but for some reason microsoft didn't think it'd be useful to add into the regular code view. Indeed, I'm talking about the vertical split view. And, if we're really going crazy, then imo it should be possible to do both splits at the same time, and as many times as you like in sub-splits.
Hi, on 2 machines I have this same bug when using the tab well. I have the option "pinned tabs are on a dedicated line" checked. The problem happens only with the files opened on the non pinned tabs row (the second row).
Sometimes when opening a new file or selecting a non pinned tab the content of the file becomes full white, with only ontlining displaying, and all visual studio menus opens on the full left of the screen instead of being under the menu clicked.
The only solution to have the content of the file back and fix the menu bug is to pin the current file's tab. Then all goes back to normal ... until it happens again. When it happens once, it happens again quite quickly.
I thought it a conflict with resharper and disabled it. But the problem arised again. Any idea ?
Colorized parameter help color settings not applied at startup
I have a dark theme on Visual Studio and the default background colors for the colorized parameter help makes it unreadable. I know I can change the color via Tools->Options->Environment->Fonts and Colors->Signature Help Tooltip Background. But there is a problem: the next time I start Visual Studio, the custom color is not applied. I must go to the options menu, select the Font and Colors tab, then press Ok. It is really annoying.
I think that there should be a way to disable the colorized parameter help feature as well.
I often find myself piling up lots and lots of code editor windows. I have to close them all from time to time. Just as there already is a "Close all but this" command, it would be useful to be able to close all editor windows except the one currently pinned ones. I hope this makes sense...
Install Error : System.IO.PathTooLongException: La ruta de acceso especificada o el nombre de archivo (o ambos) son demasiado largos. El nombre de archivo completo debe ser inferior a 260 caracteres y el nombre del directorio debe ser inferior a 248. en Microsoft.VisualStudio.ExtensionManager.ExtensionManagerService.BeginInstall(IInstallableExtension installableExtension, Boolean perMachine, AsyncOperation asyncOp) en Microsoft.VisualStudio.ExtensionManager.ExtensionManagerService.InstallWorker(IInstallableExtension extension, Boolean perMachine, AsyncOperation asyncOp)
Changing the background color is not a good idea. Very hard to read the current line text and when the ide also applies "Highlited Reference", a break point hit and various effect... Fore color setting, bold setting is also not honored.
Anyway this feature still would be nice with a different highlighting method: - applies underline instead of the background color? - or draw a rectangle around the current line (like the SQL DML marker)?
After installing my Browse With context menu in Solution explorer dissappearaed (VS2010 Ultimate, web development settings). Is there any idea how could I resolve it?
One quick question...how do I remove a vertical guideline? Added two, but don't need or want them and no matter where I click, the 'Remove guideline' menu item is disabled...
I noticed that when I added a guide at col 80, the line itself actually comes down at about col 71. I have to right-click on col 80 to get the Remove guideline option enabled, so maybe you need to click 9 cols to the right as well?
I did wonder whether this was an issue with having line numbers enabled, but disabling didn't seem to make a difference.
I have line numbers enabled and not seeing this issue.
I have picked up that if you do not click in code (i.e. you click after the last closing brace) then the remove option is disabled. I think the issue is that the caret needs to be on the line for the remove option.
Found this below in the discussion - could explain the problem: From: cnervig
There's a bug where, when you try to add/remove guidelines on a line with tabs, it counts each tab as only one character, so offsets the guidelines you add, or try to remove, by that much.
So if you added a guideline, and are having trouble removing it, try right clicking on it on a row with NO tabs, or just right click several characters off to the right (4 characters for every tab on the line, I think?)
Thanks for the bug report. I'm looking into it. I'll probably post an update to the stand-alone version (called "Editor Guidelines") this weekend. I don't know how long it'll take to roll-up into the Pro Power Tools.
I had the same problem, I added a few guidelines just to test and then needed to remove them but the Remove context menu was always disabled. A quick Google (I mean Bing) found that these guidelines are just a registry entry at: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Text Editor. Just delete the Guidelines entry and restart Visual Studio.
On a side note, the guidelines creation menu should be moved to the Options dialog, as setting up guidelines is not something that you do often, just once when you first setup your environment. Keeping the context menu clutter free is important.
You can report it here :). Could you please send us a snapshot of how your project is structured in your Solution Explorer window? docwell2010plus [at] microsoft.com
Had the same issue with VS2010 on XP machine. Tried and tried again to load from VS2010 and direct from this site using FireFox, still no luck. Then fired up Internet Explorer and tried again downloading direct from this site. Long delay, no screen feedback on what was happening but ultimately got a dialog box to save the file, which I did and the file installed ok!
Don't know what the issue is but the persistence paid off. Good luck!
Don't know what happenend there, my post got cut off.. Was saying I also tried in Chrome. Have noticed that that download from Firefox was 23,395 bytes while the one from Chrome was 23,530 bytes so it looks like something is affecting the download.
Align Assignments doesn't work. also for foreign keyboards, the keys are not perfect. Is there a way to change the default keyboard mapping (Ctrl+Alt+])? Which is the name of the command?
There's a bug where, when you try to add/remove guidelines on a line with tabs, it counts each tab as only one character, so offsets the guidelines you add, or try to remove, by that much.
So if you added a guideline, and are having trouble removing it, try right clicking on it on a row with NO tabs, or just right click several characters off to the right (4 characters for every tab on the line, I think?)
It might take them longer than we'd think. I had already brough this up at the Guideline GUI specific page: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/7f2a6727-2993-4c1d-8f58-ae24df14ea91, Q
What the ...? It looks like the ampersand is not allowed here. Sorry again, guys. Retry #2: ..., Q and A, with some nitty-gritty response from the dev. That was 20 days ago, and now we get to see the add-on repackaged in the same deplorable state.
Yup, thanks for the bug report (again). My apologies for not getting back to you on the other thread, Crackadial. I'll try to get to that problem with mixed tabs and spaces this week.
Filipk69, yes you can have vertical guidelines in JavaScript files, however it appears that the .JS editor (and some other editors) uses a different context menu so the menu choices are not there. You can work around this by opening a different kind of file (.txt or .xml, for example), and using the context menu there to add or remove guidelines. I'll look into why the .js context menu is different and see if I can add the guidelines menu choices there too.
Is there a way to change the colors used for the Colorized Parameter Help feature? I use a dark color scheme, where code text is a variety of light colors (light grey, light blue, light green, etc), on a dark grey background. Unfortunately, the Colorized Parameter Help feature seems to used the customized colors, but still uses the standard light grey background, making the text almost unreadable.
If not, is it possible to disable just this feature?
I have exactly the same issue with yellow text I use in my dark theme. I love this extension, but I'll have to disable it for now. For anyone without a dark theme, here's what the problem looks like:
You can customize the background color of the parameter help tooltip using the option at "Tools->Options->Environment->Fonts and Colors->Signature Help Tooltip Background". Modifying the background color should make this feature work better with your dark theme.
You can also (rather forcefully) disable the Colorized Parameter Help feature by going to "%localappdata%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Extensions\Microsoft\Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power Tools\10.0.10602.2200\" and renaming ColorizedSignatureHelp.dll to something else. This isn't exactly an ideal solution, but all the other features seem to work still, and Visual Studio hasn't crashed (yet).
The text editor stops to draw the text after pinning a tab
I've set Tab Sorting to Alphabetically and have pinned a tab. Then when I switch to another document and then click on any pinned tab the text editor displays no text but outlining markers only. Moreover, the tooltips are displayed at the top-left edge of the screen.
When the option is switched off everything goes right.
It doesn't matter what kind of files are open. It works incorrect even when you do not open documents. Steps to reproduce: 1. Tools|Options|Environment|Startup: 'At Startup' set to 'Show Start Page' 2. Tools|Options|Environment|Document Tab Well: 'Tab Sorting' set check 'Alphabetically' 3. Exit VisualStudio 4. Start VisualStudio - you should see Start Page 5. Place VisualStudio window far from top and left edges of screen 6. Pin Start Page tab 7. click any MainMenu sub menu (File, View, etc) - you would see them at top-left corner of the screen. Toolips are alse misplaced. Docking windows get corrupted as well (no buttons on the caption, etc). 8. Close All Windows - everything comes to right way.
It seems to me that the extension corrupts coordinate system of the graphics context of the application. So everything is drawn in wrong places.
I've installed the VS 2010 Power Tools and am using VS 2010 Ulitimate. In my "Tools->Options->Environment" path, there is no "Document Tab Well". What am I missing?
Cannot add an assembly if the full path contains certain characters but works at other times.
ie. This fails:- D:\Projects\C#\...\MyAssembly.dll (where ... is any or no subfolders) This works:- D:\Projects\MyAssembly.dll This also works:- C:\Program Files\MyCompany\MyProduct\MyAssembly.dll
I really like the look of the new Add References dialog from all the blog posts etc. Unfortunately, since installing the Pro Power Tools extension I can't get this dialog to come up at all. I've had to disable the extension to be able to add references again. Let me know what I can do to help you fix this bug.
We have received reports of problems with this extension when the Tabs Studio (http://www.tabsstudio.com) plug-in is installed, as they both replace default behavior in the document tab well. Their latest version has been updated to work with the Pro Power Tools. As you might imagine, Tabs Studio will supercede almost all functionality of this extension.
However, if for some reason you cannot upgrade, you can still install the Pro Power Tools and disable only the tab well extension by running the following command (from a regular command prompt, or pressing Win+R): reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\DialogPage\Microsoft.DocWellBehavior.GeneralOptions /v Behavior /t REG_SZ /d Default /f
You can use the following command to turn off the pin button for non-pinned tabs. Seeing the feedback we have received, we will probably surface this option in the UI in future versions.
Good feature. I think it would be nice if not only mixed tabs/spaces are detected but also the usage of tab/spaces which is inconsistent with the option "Keep tabs/insert spaces" of the editor.
It would be nice to regex tab colors by more properties than just filename (this is how i understand it now works). For my usage, namespace or project name will be best, but it can be directory name/path also etc. My scenario is, that we have some our framework sources and standard sources. Framework's files are all in one namespace (or all projects begins with same prefix), so it'll be very easily shown what source belngs to what. Similarly, when debugging microsoft sources, it would be nice, that it is colored (by blue for example), but rest of my project is another color.
It's strange enough that the path is cut off. I've expected that exactly the same text what is shown in a tooltip would be used for matching. Otherwise, the feature is of little use.
I just downloaded and installed the Pro Power Tools successfully and restarted Visual Studio. The Extension Manager lists the tools but [Disabled]. I can only click the Uninstall-button as the Enable-button is disabled.
There are two steps to this... first, select "Tools -> Options... -> Environment -> Document Tab Well -> General" and turn on "Color tabs by regular expressions". In the same dialog then select the page "Document Tab Well -> Color Coding", in this page you can add any regular expression and color you want (at the bottom of the list you will find a couple of pre-existing examples).
Please note: This may conflict with your formatting settings. E.g. in C# you will need to disable: Tools->Options->Text Editor->C#->Formatting->Spacing->"Ignore spaces in declaration statements"
If "disable" means uncheck then this is backwards. You must check (enable) Ignore spaces in declarations. Otherwise when you reformat your code (Edit-->Advanced-->Format document or Ctrl+E, D) the blanks inserted will be removed.
Free
