This article will cover the introduction of new visual studio 2005 IDE features.
Code,Debug and Continue without Restarting your Application – Visual Basic 6.0 developers are accustomed to making changes on the fly. Tweaking statements, refining logic and even inserting entirely new block of code while they work. Fortunately in Visual Studio 2005 this feature will be available to developers.
You don't need to wait for an error to occur to use edit-and-continue debugging. You can also set a brake point your code or select Debug-> Break from the menu anytime.
Look inside an object while debugging- Visual Studio 2005 has always made it possible for you to peer into variables while debugging your code, just by hovering them with the mouse pointer. New Visual Studio 2005 supports Debugger Data Tips and Debug Visualizers to look inside the object for values.
Diagnose and correct errors on the fly- The new Exception Assistant is helping to head start for resolving common issues.
Rename all instance of any program element-Symbolic Rename allows you to rename all instance of any element you declare in your program, from class and interface to properties and methods in a single step.
Symbolic rename works with any property,class or method name you want to change. Here are a few important points to keep in mind about how symbolic rename works:
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If you rename a class, all the statements that create an instance of class are also changed.
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If you rename a method,all the statements that call that method are also changed.
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If you change a variable name that is the same as a method name,only the variable is changed.
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If you change a local variable name that is the same as a local variable name with different scope only the first variable is affected.
IntelliSense Filtering and AutoCorrect- IntelliSense Filtering restricts the number options you see to those that make sense to the current context. AutoCorrect goes one step further by recommending ways to resolve syntax errors,rather then simply reporting them.
Edit control properties in Place- Now you can edit the properties of controls using View - > Property Editing View.
Call Methods at Design Time – Now you can call methods at design time – because Visual Studio 2005
now supports Background Compilation feature.
Insert Boilerplate Code using CodeSnippets- some code is common and generic enough that programmers everywhere write it again and again each day. Visual Studio 2005 includes a tool name Code Snippets. This has readymade code for common tasks that you can insert into code window easily.
XML Documentation – Properly commenting and documenting code takes time. Visual Studio 2005 changes all this by introducing a feature named XML Comments. With XML Comments you can comment your code using a predefined format.
XML Comments are distinguished from ordinary comments by their format. All xml comments starts with three apostrophes(''') rather then single.
<summary>
Describes a class or another type. This is the highest level information for your code.
<remarks>
Allows you to supplement the summary information. This tag is most commonly used to give a high level description of each type member.
<param>
Describes the parameter accepted by a method. Add one <param>tag for each parameter.
<returns>
Describes the return value of a method.
<exceptions>
Allows you to specify which exceptions a class can throw.
<example>
Lets you specify an example of how to use a method or other member.
<see>
allows you to create a link to another documentation elements.
In addition, there are tags that are used just to format or structure blocks of text.
<para>
Let you add structure to a tag by separating its contents into paragraph.
<list>
Starts a bulleted list. You must tag individual list item with the <item> tag.
<c>
Indicates that text within a description should be marked as code.
<code>
indicates multiple line of code.
Maulik.Soni