Book Image

Visual Studio 2019 Tricks and Techniques

By : Paul Schroeder, Aaron Cure
Book Image

Visual Studio 2019 Tricks and Techniques

By: Paul Schroeder, Aaron Cure

Overview of this book

Visual Studio 2019 (VS 2019) and Visual Studio Code (VS Code) are powerful professional development tools that help you to develop applications for any platform with ease. Whether you want to create web, mobile, or desktop applications, Microsoft Visual Studio is your one-stop solution. This book demonstrates some of the most sophisticated capabilities of the tooling and shows you how to use the integrated development environment (IDE) more efficiently to be more productive. You’ll begin by gradually building on concepts, starting with the basics. The introductory chapters cover shortcuts, snippets, and numerous optimization tricks, along with debugging techniques, source control integration, and other important IDE features that will help you make your time more productive. With that groundwork in place, more advanced concepts such as the inner workings of project and item templates are covered. You will also learn how to write quality, secure code more efficiently as well as discover how certain Visual Studio features work 'under the hood'. By the end of this Visual Studio book, you’ll have learned how to write more secure code faster than ever using your knowledge of the extensions and processes that make developing successful solutions more enjoyable and repeatable.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
1
Section 1: Visual Studio IDE Productivity Essentials
9
Section 2: Customizing Project Templates and Beyond
13
Section 3: Leveraging Extensions for the Win

What are VS Code extensions?

Extensions in VS Code add functionality to the integrated development environment (IDE) that isn't built in. It can be something as small as a utility to insert a line of code, to a full-blown debugger/code formatter/syntax highlighter (that is, the C# for Visual Studio Code (powered by OmniSharp) extension that provides a full C# compiler and debugging environment). The functionality you can provide with an extension is virtually limitless.

In VS Code, we manage extensions using the Extensions view. We can access it using either the View | Extensions menu item or the Extensions icon on the sidebar, or through the Ctrl + Shift + X keyboard command (Shift + Command + X on a Mac). The Extensions view is shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 12.1 – Extensions view

This view lists all of the extensions currently in scope, as well as details about the extension in the right pane, and the installation status of the...