Commands for managing the IDE and for developing, maintaining and executing apps are contained in menus, which are located on the menu bar of the IDE (Fig. 2.5). The set of menus displayed depends on what you’re currently doing in the IDE.
Menus contain groups of related commands called menu items that, when selected, cause the IDE to perform specific actions—for example, open a window, save a file, print a file and execute an app. For example, selecting File > New > Project… tells the IDE to display the New Project dialog. The menus depicted in Fig. 2.5 are summarized in Fig. 2.6.
Form
is in Design view.Menu | Contains commands for |
---|---|
File | Opening, closing, adding and saving projects, as well as printing project data and exiting Visual Studio. |
Edit | Editing apps, such as cut, copy, paste, undo, redo, delete, find and select. |
View | Displaying IDE windows (for example, Solution Explorer, Toolbox, Properties window) and for adding toolbars to the IDE. |
Project | Managing projects and their files. |
Build | Turning your app into an executable program. |
Debug | Compiling, debugging (that is, identifying and correcting problems in apps) and running apps. |
Team | Connecting to a Team Foundation Server—used by development teams that typically have multiple people working on the same app. |
Format | Arranging and modifying a Form ’s controls. The Format menu appears only when a GUI component is selected in Design view. |
Tools | Accessing additional IDE tools and options for customizing the IDE. |
Test | Performing various types of automated testing on your app. |
Analyze | Locating and reporting violations of the .NET Framework Design Guidelines (https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/ms229042 ). |
Window | Hiding, opening, closing and displaying IDE windows. |
Help | Accessing the IDE’s help features. |
You can access many common menu commands from the toolbar (Fig. 2.7), which contains icons that graphically represent commands. By default, the standard toolbar is displayed when you run Visual Studio for the first time—it contains icons for the most commonly used commands, such as opening a file, saving files and running apps (Fig. 2.7). The icons that appear on the standard toolbar may vary, depending on the version of Visual Studio you’re using. Some commands are initially disabled (grayed out or unavailable to use). These commands are enabled by Visual Studio only when you can use them. For example, Visual Studio enables the command for saving a file once you begin editing a file.
You can customize which toolbars are displayed by selecting View > Toolbars then selecting a toolbar from the list in Fig. 2.8. Each toolbar you select is displayed with the other toolbars at the top of the Visual Studio window. You move a toolbar by dragging its handle
at the left side of the toolbar. To execute a command via the toolbar, click its icon.
It can be difficult to remember what each toolbar icon represents. Hovering the mouse pointer over an icon highlights it and, after a brief pause, displays a description of the icon called a tool tip (Fig. 2.9)—these tips help you become familiar with the IDE’s features and serve as useful reminders for each toolbar icon’s functionality.