Visual Basic® 2010 Programmer's Reference

Chapter 3. Customization

The Visual Studio IDE is packed with thousands of tools that are available through toolbar and menu commands. So many tools are available that the IDE would be practically useless if every tool were displayed at the same time. In the interests of usability, the IDE displays only the tools that the Microsoft Visual Studio developers thought would be most useful when you were performing a particular task.

Unfortunately, the Microsoft developers didn't know exactly what you would be doing while developing applications, so they made their best guesses about which tools you would need. Under some circumstances, you may find that a completely different set of tools would be more useful. In those cases, you should customize the IDE to make using those tools easier and faster.

This chapter explains how you can customize the IDE. It explains how to make new toolbars and menus, add commands to them, and determine the commands' appearances. It also tells how you can define keyboard shortcuts to make the commands you use most often really easy to access.

ADDING COMMANDS

The Tools menu's Customize command displays the dialog box shown in Figure 3-1. On the Toolbars tab, select the check boxes next to the toolbars that you want to be visible. Click New to create a new toolbar where you can add your favorite tools. You can leave the toolbar floating or drag it to the edge of the IDE and dock it. If you drag it to the top, it joins the other toolbars.

Figure 3.1. The Customize ...