Microsoft 9GD00001 manual Toolbar, Work Area

Chapter 1: Introducing Visual Studio 2010 15

The Tools menu contains a grab-bag of functionality; for instance, you can attach a debugger to see your other programs run, line by line; connect to a database for data; set add-ins, macros, and more. One very important menu item on the Tools menu is Options, which exposes hundreds of settings for customizing your VS environment.

You can use the Test menu to find all of the functionality for performing unit tests to test your new software one part at a time. This is also where other editions of VS include access to other types of testing tools.

The Analyze, Architecture, and Team menus have advanced functionality for improving the performance of an application, working with application architecture, and integrating with Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server.

The Windows and Help menus are similar to most other application types, where the Windows menu allows you to manipulate the VS windows and the Help menu is where you visit to find the technical documentation on VS.

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Many menu items contain shortcut keys that perform the same action as selecting the menu item. If you are curious about what shortcut keys are associated with a particular action, you can often find them by opening the menu to see if there are shortcuts associated with that action. For example, to open the Solution Explorer window and visit the View menu, the shortcut keys are CTRL-W, S.

Toolbar

Beneath the menu in Figure 1-10, you’ll find a toolbar. The toolbar contains frequently accessed functionality that is a subset of what is available via menus. The toolbars are context-sensitive, showing and hiding depending on what you are doing in VS. You can display any toolbar by selecting View Toolbars.

You can also customize toolbars by right-clicking the toolbar of your choice, scrolling to the bottom of the list, and selecting Customize. The toolbar customization window allows you to add any feature you would like to the current toolbar.

Work Area

In the center of Figure 1-10, you can see the Start page. This is the same area that you’ll use to write code and work with visual designers. The Start page is divided into two sections: project management and information. The project management side of the page, on the left, offers a quick way to start new projects or work with a list of recently opened projects. The information side of the page, on the right, contains resources to help you get started with VS, such as links to the Microsoft Web site, walkthroughs to help you learn new features, and a tab that updates with the latest developer news from Microsoft.