Subtitles of the Movie

Now let's talk about customizing Visual Web Developer. We've just gotten started creating a basic Web page and so forth and I'm using my VTCExample page that I set up for the Web site that I started and if you're new to Visual Web Developer there's a whole lot going on here and you'll kind of get that feeling sometimes that you just sat down in the cockpit of a 747 or something and I want to kind of explain some of the things that are going on here and some of the ways that you can customize it for whatever you'd like. Now obviously you have your Standard Commands up here. These will change dynamically based on where you are in the application, so you'll see different things show up here. Your Toolbar's up here - I won't go through all these, this is not a Visual Web Developer class, I won't waste a lot of time - do notice you can go to View, Toolbars and you can see the various Toolbars that you can set up, the ones with the checks obviously are turned On. What I really want to show you is, is in relation to screen real estate. A lot of things can happen here. If you notice on the right side this is your Solution Explorer. This shows you the name of your project and your solution, your pages that are out there, your supporting files and so forth. Pay close attention to these particular tools up here. This will enable your properties window down here. This will refresh this window so if you've added new pages or anything they will show up. This will show related files nested. Notice these two files are out there, but they have a relationship that doesn't show in this type of display, but if I tell it to show them related as nested then I can see them and I can even hide them. And then this will allow me to view code, so if I click here and click on View Code, it's a way to get back to that Code Behind without double-clicking and kicking off another event. This one will view the Designer so I can view the code. This one, this right here, will allow me to view the Designer so if I click View the Code then I can view the Designer, notice these tend to toggle. This will copy the Web site out and then this is my ASP.NET Configuration and this will take me straight to my ASP.NET Configuration. Let me just show you what's going to happen when you click that one, it's very interesting. This likes to take me out to where I can actually administer what's going on with some of my ASP.NET settings and configurations and that is my Web Site Administration Tool. I can work with Security, Application Configuration and some Provider Configuration and we'll leave that alone for now. Now here's the next big thing I want to show you. One of the things you will always run into, now I am doing this video in a 1024 by 768 screen size, resolution size. In development you want it as wide as you can possibly get it and you want as large a screen as possible and screen real estate becomes huge in here. It gets really tough to write this code when you're having to scroll back and forth. Microsoft, this is a standard thing in their development apps now, this box right here, notice this little push pin. It's vertical so this always shows. Well, if I click that push pin you'll notice what happened, it turned horizontal and that slid out of the way, but the tag is still here and if I mouse over the tag that will come out I can work in it as long as my mouse is in here. As soon as my mouse leaves that area that will then and I click, it'll slide out of the way and I have the entire screen for my code. Now when I go to Source View you can see this is much better than this. Same thing over here. If I ever want to see that again I can click that and pin it straight up and see it. Now if you remember, when I built that Example Web Page and all that stuff, the Toolbox, I moused over it and it popped out. Well, if I want it to stay up I can click that, but notice what's happening to my screen real estate now. I have to scroll back and forth to see all this stuff. So, I can unclick these and push everything out of the way and I can continue to open, notice on View, for example, I can turn on a document outline and then I can turn it off so that it'll slide out of the way, but it's still there and I can always get it and I can always close and turn these things off and get them back on a little bit later on. I can also, notice once this comes out, I can grab it up here and once I pin it then I can grab and drag it and dock it wherever I want it to go, so I can come over here, bring it over this and now I've docked it over here. I've pulled all that stuff over here and that can get confusing, so you may want to be careful with that. And notice these are tabbed down here. It's going to be very easy for you to lose your stuff if you're not familiar with this. Once it's pinned I can come out here and grab this, just keep moving your mouse around and I can make things wider or whatever. So, all I can tell you is play with this and understand that things will show up in all kinds of places. For example, if you remember, in one of the previous videos I actually closed the Output window down here and if I click Output by default it shows on the bottom. It's the very same thing. If I unpin this thing it'll slide down and you'll now see the Output just to the left of my mouse there and if I mouse over it that comes back up and I can see things, then I can move it back and it gets out of the way. And this is really probably where you want to get to so that you can move around in here. And notice how nice Split looks in this environment, right? So I can see more of the real estate. Now, one other thing I want to show you. You'll notice that when I go to Source View, or when I go to my Code Behind page right here, I can see line numbers and that's turned On. If I go to Tools, Options, I can do a couple of things. In the General section I can turn Line Numbers On or Off and notice with this, it'll take a minute, yes, the Line Numbers should be off - I love live demos - OK, there they go. You don't see them here. You shouldn't see them here - I don't know why you are - probably after I save it and reopen they'll be gone, but notice there gone here. Notice I can also set Word Wrap on. Some people like this, some hate it, but notice right here it just wrapped this line. And if I bring my Properties out and pin it, it will wrap it off. Some people love that. Some people hate it. So that's just a couple of things and there are other options you can go play with. There are a couple of things that you can do to help make Visual Studio, to customize it, to help you get what you need to get done a lot faster and a lot more efficiently.