Tips and Tricks

Scope of Refactoring in Multi-Project Solutions

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April 30, 2014
There is a subtle connection among the Find References, Rename, and Change Signature commands of Visual Assist, and if you didn’t perceive the connection, you might believe something was awry—with your memory. The three commands—Find References, Rename, and Change Signature—share a setting to display references from, or refactor in, the current project or all projects. The shared…
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Tips and Tricks

Sorting One's Code

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April 27, 2014
Visual Assist has a plethora of features, and it’s difficult to know them all. It’s an even greater challenge to use all of them at every opportunity. We had one user, Tom, write recently that his “very small favourite feature” in Visual Assist is…
Tips and Tricks

Using Find References to Manage a Task

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March 18, 2014
Find References has been a feature of Visual Assist for about a decade. And, while Find References now shares its name with a version of the command integral to Microsoft Visual Studio, the original has pragmatic components that should make it the everyday preference. If…
Tips and Tricks

A quick way to create implementations of all methods in a class

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March 3, 2014
We released a feature some time ago that we failed to document, and since its UI is subtle, there is a good chance you know about it only if you follow our release notes closely. I raise the feature for two reasons: 1) it’s valuable, and 2) now it’s documented. The feature is Create Method Implementations, and it gives you a quick way to create implementations of all methods of a…
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Tips and Tricks

Taming the List of Methods in File

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February 26, 2014
Visual Assist includes a List Methods in File (Alt-M) feature, inaptly named because the list has grown to include more than just methods, that is a convenient way to navigate a large file. But, even if you use filtering to target specific entries, the list is sometimes…
Tips and Tricks

alt+g in Comments

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September 8, 2010
If you don’t read our build change history page, you might miss some small gold nuggets.  For example, back in build 1734, we added an enhancement to our goto command (alt+g) so that it operates within comments.  The accuracy of goto within comments depends upon…
Tips and Tricks

Open File in Solution tip

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August 31, 2010
I was using the OFIS (Open File in Solution) dialog the other day and it occurred to me that I use some features in it that might not be so apparent to users that didn’t actually write the code for it.  As an aside, this feature was formerly known as Open File in Workspace (or OFIW) before Workspaces were replaced by Solutions in Visual Studio.NET.  It took us a few years after the release…
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Tips and Tricks

Add Include

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May 6, 2009
We recently released a feature for C/C++ that has long been requested: Add Include.  A lot of work had previously been put into our #include completion listboxes – but that work is moot because now you don’t need to type #includes directives by hand. The Add…
Tips and Tricks

VA Snippet Tip #1

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March 7, 2009
VA Snippets support a number of reserved strings that enable text substitution when inserted into the text editor.  For example, any occurrence of $selected$ in a snippet is replaced with the actual text editor selection at the time the snippet was invoked. As noted in a…
Tips and Tricks

Methods in File

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February 5, 2009
Here’s a quickie… When you are in a source window, pressing Alt+M displays the VA X Methods in File list. Did you know you can filter the list by typing after the list is displayed?  Yeah, most people know that. Did you know you can filter using multiple strings as in the OFIS and FSIS dialogs?  You can, as of build 1645 (2008.07.10).  The filter supports the use of ‘-&#8216…
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