Microsoft 9GD00001 manual Navigating a Project with Class View, The Class View window

136Microsoft Visual Studio 2010: A Beginner’s Guide

Navigating a Project with Class View

An alternate way to work with projects is via Class view, which allows you to view solutions and project artifacts through the logical layout of the code. In C#, you can open Class view by pressing CTRL-W, C or select Class View from the View menu. In VB you can open Class view by pressing CTRL-SHIFT, C or select View Other Windows Class View. Figure 5-12 shows the Class View window.

In Class view, you have a hierarchy of nodes that start at the project, include references and namespaces, and contain classes under those namespaces. Under each class you have Base Types, which contains a list of base classes derived from and implemented interfaces for that specific class. Notice how I selected the Student class in Figure 5-12, which shows the members of the class in the bottom pane.

As shown in the Class View toolbar, you can create new folders, use the arrows to navigate up or down the hierarchy, or choose options of what to display in the hierarchy. There is also a button with a glyph of objects that indicate how to create a class diagram, which is discussed in the next section.

Figure 5-12 The Class View window