Subtitles of the Movie

There is another piece of functionality that's been around for quite a while in the Visual Studio Environment and that is the idea of Smart Tags, and then with the last couple of versions, Smart Tasks. I just want to point these out to you. You already know about them, you've already seen them, but they've beefed them up a lot in the 2008 version here, they give you a lot more information, they help you out a whole lot better. You'll notice that any time I mouse over any of the Toolbar buttons then I get the little pale yellow box, and that is a Smart Tag, and that is giving me just a brief description, and I always tell students who are new to this environment, bring up a Toolbar and take the time to just move across every one and read those Smart Tags, because you'll see something up there, for example, there's Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo, Redo, Navigate Backward, and notice on some of these you have these little drop-downs and you can see some other things. Notice the Add New Item has a drop-down, and I can get to all this stuff. Now, that is basically the same thing as right-clicking on a Project and saying Add New Item, and it kind of takes me to a step a little farther, but I can still do the same thing. This one's going to take me there. But you can find so many shortcuts up here, and most developers, actually most computer users fall into one of two camps: those who love and use these Smart Tags, I mean, yeah, these Smart Tags, and these Toolbar Buttons, and those who never touch them, and I would strongly recommend that you get to know these things. On this Formatting Tool you'll notice the Align to Grid, Align Left, Aligns Centers and Rights, Make the Same Size, you can do some really cool stuff with these things. So anyway, Smart Tags help you out. Also, notice that as I move over the tools in the Toolbox it actually explains what that does, and if you'll leave it there a minute it goes away, but notice it says: This is a Button and it raises an Event when the user clicks it. So that's all pretty straightforward, and as you move different places in the Environment here you will see various Smart Tags. But let's go to the Code page and I want to show you something called a Smart Task, OK? Let's say that I could try to create a Class, DimX as New, and I create a Class that's not there, notice I get the squiggly line that's telling me you've got a problem, but notice this little guy right down here. And I'm going to do that again. If I mouse over it you'll notice that I get a Smart Tag at the top saying: The Type Bob is not defined. But then I get this little exclamation point right here, and that is a Smart Task. Now if I click the drop-down it will sometimes suggest corrections, and you'll see some other menu items there sometimes. So anyway, this is trying to help you over the rough spots, help you get out of trouble, suggest some things that you might do to make it work, and that's called a Smart Task, and also Smart Tags and Smart Tasks are very closely related, so make sure that you pay attention to these things. They can really help. Another thing I'm going to show you before we complete this video. Notice that if I put my cursor over virtually any command on the screen a Smart Tag comes up and gives me a definition, or a brief description, of that. Notice this is a Public Shared Read-Only property blue. This is an instance of a system drawing color class, and it gets a system defined color. And if I mouse over color, this is a structure and it represents an ARGB Ð Alpha, Red, Green, Blue Color Ð if I look at BackColor, it's a Public overridden property Button, you know, so you can see all these things and you can see exactly what's going on with most of the things on here, OK, so take advantage of these things. They'll help you tremendously figure out where you are and what you're doing.