Hack 20. Navigate Your Source Code

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Hack 20. Navigate Your Source Code Visual Studio lets you go way beyond moving around with the arrow, Page Up, and Page Down keys. Learn some keyboard tricks that let you move around in different ways. Visual Studio provides a number of ways to navigate through your source code. This hack will cover how to use a number of helpful shortcuts as well as how to use bookmarks to quickly move around in your code. 3.6.1. Navigation Shortcuts The normal method of moving around in your source code with the mouse is perfectly acceptable, but it is also slow. When you are busy typing, it takes time to reach for the mouse, orient the cursor, and then move to another section of code by clicking on a line. Visual Studio contains a number of navigational shortcuts that can keep your hands on the keyboard and help you write code faster. 3.6.1.1 Navigation history The first two commands that you can use to navigate are the View.NavigateBackward (Ctrl and -) and View. NavigateForward (Ctrl-Shift and -) commands. These keystrokes can best be described as undo and redo commands, but instead of undoing or redoing actions, these keystrokes undo and redo navigation. For instance, if you are working in one method, then use the mouse to move over to another method, you can jump back to the previous method using the NavigateBackward keystroke. After changing something in that method, you could then jump forward again using the NavigationForward keystroke. These shortcuts also work fine across files and projects. If you are working in one file and switch to another, you can quickly jump back using the NavigateBackward shortcut keystroke. 3.6.1.2 Mouseless scrolling Usually when you want to scroll, you end up reaching for the mouse. The nice thing about scrolling is that it does not move the cursor, whereas using the regular up and down arrows does move the cursor. Thankfully, Visual Studio includes commands to scroll the file without moving the cursor. The Edit.ScrollLineUp and Edit.ScrollLineDown commands can be accessed by simply pressing Ctrl while also pressing either the up or down arrow. 3.6.1.3 Go-to brace Visual Studio includes a number of commands that will jump to the next occurrence of a code element. Possibly the most useful is Edit.GoToBrace (Ctrl-]), which will jump to the corresponding brace, parenthesis, or bracket in the document. If the cursor is on a closing brace, it will jump back to the opening brace; if the cursor is on the opening brace, it will jump to the closing brace. This keystroke will work only when the cursor is on a line that includes a brace and only with languages that use braces (C#, C++, etc.). 3.6.1.4 End and Home Visual Studio also supports the End and Home keys through the commands Edit.LineEnd and Edit.LineStart . Pressing the End or Home key will move you to the end of the current line or the start of the current line, respectively. Visual Studio also includes two commands called Edit.DocumentEnd and Edit.DocumentStart (Ctrl-End and Ctrl-Home), which will move you to the end or beginning of the current document. 3.6.2. Bookmarks Bookmarks are one of the few computing analogies that make perfect sense. Bookmarks allow you to mark a place in your code that you want to come back to, just like a regular bookmark you would use in a paper book. Creating and using bookmarks is incredibly easy and when used properly can save time that would otherwise be wasted scrolling and searching with the mouse. You can set a bookmark on a specific line in a file using the command Edit.ToggleBookmark (the keystroke chord [Hack #24] Ctrl-K, Ctrl-K). After setting a bookmark, you will see a small blue indicator next to that line where a breakpoint would normally appear. You can remove the bookmark by simply using the Edit.ToggleBookmark command again. You can also quickly move between bookmarks using two other commands, Edit.NextBookmark (Ctrl-K, Ctrl-N) and Edit.PreviousBookmark (Ctrl-K, Ctrl-P) . Using these two commands, you can quickly jump through all of your bookmarks much faster than manually searching for that last line you were on using the mouse. Bookmarks are removed when you close a file, but if you leave files open and close the solution, they are saved in your user options file [Hack #4] and will still be there next time you open the solution. You can also manually clear all bookmarks by calling the Edit.ClearBookmarks (Ctrl-K, Ctrl-L) command. Bookmarks can also be used with the mouse through the Edit Bookmarks menu.

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