Subtitles of the Movie

Now let's talk about Docking. One of the things that will confuse you really quickly, especially if you're new to the IDE and also if you've been using the IDE for a while is this issue of Docking or moving windows around. And so what I want to do here is show you a couple of oddities about the environment and the first one happens on Start Up. Not really a Docking issue, but I don't know where else to put it in the Course so we'll do it here, OK? Let's open Visual Studio 2008 and I want you to notice something. I've got the Server Explorer Window pinned so you can see it right here for the purposes of this demonstration. I opened Visual Studio and it starts up with the Start Up Page, and again, as a quick reminder, we talked about this in a different video but I'll do it again here right quick. If I want the Start Up Page to show up, if I click on Tools, come down to Options, and then in the Options dialog box if I click on Start Up this top drop-down right here, I can tell it to show Start Up Page and that will make this page show up. Notice it's showing me the recent projects that I've had open and I've been playing with or working with whatever, and if I choose Ð I'm going to click on Hello World Ð and you're going to notice something happened over here, but you may not always see it jump to that Form page, OK, because let me show you. I had this opened the last time that I closed Visual Studio, OK, so I'm going to close this and then you will notice that when I reopen Visual Studio I go to the Start Page, I click on Hello World, and notice it looks like nothing happened. Since I had all of my Forms and all of my tabs up here closed when I closed Visual Studio it remembered my environment and so it opened the Hello World project without any of the tabs open. Now, notice that if I have this unpinned and I open a project that way it looks like the project didn't open. I have to look in the Solution Explorer to see that it actually opened, and if I double-click the Forms, or any of the Windows or tabs, then I will see them appear. Now I hope that made sense. So, let's move on to Docking now. That one will right there will drive you nuts and steal an hour of your afternoon one day because you'll keep reopening projects and trying to open projects and you won't realize they opened, it's just that the Integrated Development Environment doesn't actually go to those projects necessarily until you actually open them out of the Solution Explorer. Now, one of the things that will drive you nuts at some point is this idea of Docking. First of all we talked about Toolbars in a separate video and notice on this Toolbar right here on each of these Toolbars there are these little four dots on the left side and that's showing you that that's the beginning of that Toolbar and if I click when I've got the four arrows, I can move that Toolbar and I can make it free-floating. OK? And then I can move it around if I'm using dual monitors I can move it over to another monitor, OK, then I'll have to grab it back. But notice if I drag it to the bottom of the screen I can Dock this thing down there. So if I'd rather have my Toolbars down there I can do it. Notice I can drag it to the left side of the screen and they will Dock vertically. Now some people like that. So I can go grab this one as well, pull it to the left, and then pull it up and I can Dock both of these Toolbars on the left side of the screen. It depends on how you like it. But just be careful when you're Docking that you understand where you're putting these things, OK? And sometimes you'll inadvertently click and drag and put these things in a place you didn't intend. All you have to do is click them Ð notice I can put them above the Menus if I would like, but I can mov these around very easily. OK, enough of a 10-minute video on moving Toolbars, right? So, let's talk about the real problem here. If I don't have these Windows pinned, for example, Solution Explorer is not pinned so it moves in and out, I can't grab it and move it. But if I pin Solution Explorer Ð I'm going to go ahead and pin Properties so I can show you here Ð I pin them, which means they stay out and they don't move. I can now drag the Solution Explorer away and this becomes a resizable free-floating Window that I can move around. Now notice every time I start to drag it these little indicators pop up, and this is telling me where this will be Docked if I drag the mouse over that little character and drop it. So if I drag it to right here and let it go it's now going to be Docked right here next to Properties, and if I don't like that I simply grab it, drag it off, and you'll notice where these Buttons appear, and I can drag it over here and drop it, and again, it's over on the right side again, or notice within the Solution Explorer, I can drag it right down to the bottom and it's now Docked inside there, OK? But notice I can grab Properties, I can Dock it to the bottom of the screen. I can unpin it, and now Properties are down here at the bottom, OK? Now, from time to time you will grab these things and drop them, but I want to show you one that will really confuse you here. OK? Notice, I'm going to put this back over here. Notice in the Toolbox section over here we have tabs at the bottom. There's Server Explorer, which we'll talk about later in a different video, and there's Toolbox. If I grab, as long as it's pinned like this, if I grab the tab down here I can drag this away and it becomes a separate free-floating box. OK? Now, if I drag it back and put it on the left notice I've now got this little thing going, I can drag it away, put it back on top and notice now I've got a top and bottom type relationship here, and if I unpin them both then they show up over here as separate tabs. OK? If I grab, if I pin them, OK, pull this back off, bring it in here, put it to the left, unpin them both, you'll notice that they start, they'll move around on you and they can get really confusing about where these things are, OK? So, I just wanted you to see how to make these things show up. And notice if I drop it on the center one it becomes a tab down here now. I don't know if you saw that. Let me drag it off and show you again. If I drag it in here and this comes up, and if I pull over the center one you'll notice that center thing has two tabs under it, I hope you can see that. It becomes tabbed again. So, anyway, what I want to point out here is, it can get very confusing especially when you're kind of thinking, if you do what I do, and instead of doodling like you would on paper, you're kind of clicking around here, you know, and you accidentally grab this and pull it out, whoa, then you try to put it back and you lose it and you can't get it in the right place. So, that's Docking. I just wanted to step you through it. It's very powerful. You can totally configure your environment however you would like, but you can also get lost, so just be aware of that.