Features

VSCommands provides code navigation and generation improvements which will make your everyday coding tasks blazing fast and, together with tens of essential IDE enhancements, it will take your productivity to another level.

Suggest new features and vote for existing ideas at vscommands.com/community

IDE Enhancements Output Windows Highlighting  Build Output Debug Output Search Output Solution Explorer Enhancements Preview Image  Prevent Accidental Drag & Drop  Prevent Accidental Linked Item Delete  Reload all modified projects Group / Ungroup Items  Show Assembly Details Build Startup Projects Open Command Prompt Open PowerShell Open (Shell Command) Locate Source File Open File Location Show / Hide All Files Edit Project File Edit Solution File Copy / Paste As Link Copy / Paste Reference Open In Expression Blend Collapse All Clean All Build Configurations Reload All Projects Apply Fix  File being used by another process StyleCop warnings Importing .pfx key file was cancelled Advanced Zooming StackOverflow notifications Always show Dialog Boxes in Task Bar

Debugging Assistance Attach To Local IIS Debug As Administrator Debug As Normal user Debug As Different user Build Assistance Cancel Build When First Project Fails Build Output Highlighting Navigation & Search Search Online Code Assistance File Structure Colors Highlighting  Comments Formatting  Xml: Highlight Key Attributes Xaml: Highlight Bindings  Xaml: Highlight Resources  Create Code Contract Insert new Guid Solution Properties  Manage Reference Paths Manage Project Properties Zooming Enhancements

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  Output Windows Highlighting

Find Results Window

Find what you search for easily with smart context highlighting

This feature can be customized from Tools | Options | Environment | Fonts and Colors | VSCommands.FindResults.*
This feature is available in VSCommands Pro.

Build Output Window 

Highlight errors and warnings to make them easier to spot

This feature can be customized from Tools | Options | Environment | Fonts and Colors | VSCommands.BuildOutput.*
This feature is available in VSCommands Pro.

Debug Output Window

Highlight exceptions, build errors, warnings and other events logged to the Debug Output Window during program execution

 

This feature can be customized from Tools | Options | Environment | Fonts and Colors | VSCommands.DebugOutput.*
This feature is available in VSCommands Pro.

 

Friendly Solution Name 

Visual clue as to which solution (or branch) is open in Visual Studio

This feature will be useful for developers who often work on different branches of the same project at the same time.

This can quickly become frustrating because there is no quick way of finding which branch is open in which instance of Visual Studio.

Friendly Solution Name feature allows you to specify a friendlier name for your solution which can be based on folder structure.

All you have have to do is to specify a friendly name pattern and regex to extract branch name from solution path (new properties available on Solution node in Solution Explorer). Regex can contain any number of named groups which can be later referenced  back in Friendly Name by using {groupName} placeholder:

VSCommands will then display this friendly name in the title of Visual Studio main window making it easy to see when you alt-tab between windows

or when you use peek feature of Windows 7

It will also add Friendly Name to Solution Explorer title bar

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Solution Explorer Enhancements

Preview Images

Preview images in Solution Explorer

New Preview property in Properties window allows you to quickly see images selected in Solution Explorer without opening each of them separately

Supported Formats:

• JPG (Lite)
• TIFF (Lite)
• BMP (Lite)
• PNG (Pro)
• GIF (Pro)
• ICO (Pro)

Prevent accidental Drag & Drop in Solution Explorer

Never again will you have to spend hours cleaning up the solution after accidentally moving files or folder around.

This feature is available in VSCommands Pro.

Prevent accidental linked item delete in Solution Explorer

Displays a confirmation dialog when deleting a linked item

This feature is available in VSCommands Pro.

Reload all modified projects

Reload or ignore changes to all modified projects at once

If you work with large solutions and are tired of seeing Project File Modified Dialog flooding you screen then you will love this new feature.

Instead of having one instance of old dialog opened for every modified project:

You will now be presented with only one message

This works great with Reload All Projects command available from Solution context menu in Solution Explorer.

This feature is available in VSCommands Lite.
VSCommands Pro adds ability to keep files open after reloading is complete.

 Show Assembly Details

See detailed information about your referenced assemblies

 

This feature is available in VSCommands Lite (readonly mode).
This feature is available in VSCommands Pro (ability to copy information).

Build Startup Project

Build startup projects only, no need to rebuild whole solution anymore

This feature is available in VSCommands Lite.

Open Command Prompt

This feature is available in VSCommands Lite.

 Open Power Shell

This feature is available in VSCommands Lite.

 Open (Shell Command)

Interact with custom file types directly from Solution Explorer.

This feature allows you to interact with files not supported natively by Visual Studio directly from Solution Explorer by exposing default shell open action for these files (such as Merge on .reg or execute on .bat files)

This feature is available in VSCommands Pro.

Locate Source File

Navigate to the source of linked file with just one click

This feature is available in VSCommands Lite.

Open File Location

This feature is available in VSCommands Lite.

Show/Hide All Files

This feature is available in VSCommands Lite.

Edit Project / Solution File

This feature is available in VSCommands Lite.

Group / Ungroup Items

Easily group and ungroup items using IDE (DependentUpon)

This feature is available in VSCommands Lite.

Copy / Paste as Link

Quickly copy and paste linked files between projects

This feature is available in VSCommands Lite.

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Copy / Paste Reference

Copy and paste references between projects (assembly, projects and active x references

This feature is available in VSCommands Lite.

Open In Expression Blend

Open project in Expression Blend directly from Visual Studio interface

This feature is available in VSCommands Lite.

Collapse All

Collapse all projects and folders in Solution Explorer

This feature is available in VSCommands Lite.

Attach to local IIS

Quickly attach to local IIS to debug ASP.Net projects

This feature is available in VSCommands Lite.

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  Solution Properties

View and edit referenced paths and properties of all projects from one place

This feature is available in VSCommands Lite (Projects).
This feature is available in VSCommands Pro (Reference Paths).

 Apply Fix

Automatically fix build errors and StyleCop warnings.

Take a well know ‘file being used by another process’ error as an example:
Unable to copy file xxx to yyy. The process cannot access the file xxx because it is being used by another process.

With VSCommands you can now right click on error message, select Apply Fix command

and click Ok to end all processes that are currently using this file:

Another example of frequent problem that can be now easily solved is key import error:

Cannot import the following key file : xxx.pfx. The key file may be password protected. To correct this, try to import the certificate again or manually install the certificate to the Strong Name CSP with the following key container name: VS_KEY_XXXXXX

When you click Apply Fix the certificate will be installed to the correct CSP.

Apply Fix can also fix several StyleCop warnings:

This feature is available in VSCommands Pro.

Search Online

Find more information about selected item using online search

This feature is available in VSCommands Lite.

StackOverflow Notifications

Track your reputation changes, messages and favourite questions without leaving Visual Studio

Notification system supports display of:

• Your reputation
• Reputation change in configured period (e.g. +20 = got 20 reputation)
• New messages
• Favourites changes
• New revisions
• New Badges

This feature can be customized from Tools | VSCommands | Options | Other | Stack Overflow
This feature is available in VSCommands Lite.

Locate in Solution

Find and highlight currently opened file in Solution Explorer

This feature is available in VSCommands Lite.

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Debugging Assistance

Start without debugger

Launch compiled output of your project without attaching debugger to it.

Unlike Start Without Debugger command available in Visual Studio which works on startup projects only, this feature works on any selected project and will not try to recompile your sources (so it will work even if an instance of your application is already running).

This feature is available in VSCommands Lite.

Debug as administrator 

Start a new process with elevated permissions and attach debugger

This feature is available in VSCommands Pro.

Debug as normal user 

Start a new process without elevated permissions and attach debugger

This feature is available in VSCommands Pro.

Debug as different user

Start a new process as different user and attach debugger

This feature is available in VSCommands Pro.

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Code Assistance

Create Code Contract

Quickly create code contracts for interfaces and abstract classes

Insert New Guid

Quickly insert a new guid using custom formatting

Last selected format will be selected by default next time you use this feature.

This feature is available in VSCommands Lite.

Xml / Xaml – Highlight Key Attributes

Highlight attributes such as ‘key’, ‘name’ or ‘id’ to make it easier to identify them in code

(config file)

(xaml)

This feature can be customized from Tools | Options | Environment | Fonts and Colors | VSCommands.Xml.KeyAttribute

File Structure

See what code elements are part of current file and easily navigate the their declarations

Supported file types:

• C# (.cs)
• VB.Net (.vb)
• C++ (.cpp, .h)
• Xml (.xml + any xml based file format)
• Xaml (.xaml)
• Config files (.config, .clientconfig)

web.config

app.config – User Settings

WCF Configuration in .ClientConfig

XAML – Resource Dictionary

XAML – Control Template

XAML – User Control

C++

C#

XML

Colors Highlighting

Highlight colors inside code editor

It is sometimes hard to convert few hex numbers to actual colour in your head. Fortunately you don’t have to do it anymore!

VSCommands can now display colour hints whenever a colour is used in your code.

(long and short hexadecimal notation)

(rgb / rgba notations)

(color names)

Supported file types:

• .html
• .css
• .aspx
• .js
• .xaml
• .xml
• .cs
• .vb
• .cpp

This feature can be enabled from Tools | VSCommands | Options | IDE Enhancements | Enable Colors highlighting
This feature is available in VSCommands Pro.

Xaml – Highlight Bindings and Resources

Make bindings easier to spot in your code and immediately see where attribute values are coming from.

This feature can be enabled from Tools | VSCommands | Options | IDE Enhancements | XAML: Enable advanced highlighting

This feature can be customized from Tools | Options | Environment | Fonts and Colors | VSCommands.Xaml.*

Comments Formatting

Increase comments readability with custom formatting options

Ever wanted to put more life into your comments?

We give you the opportunity!

VSCommands can now detect different types of comments and format them according to your needs:

• todo
• note
• ! (exclamation)
• ? (question)
• + (strong)
• - (weak)
• x (deleted)

This feature can be enabled from Tools | VSCommands | Options | IDE Enhancements | Enable custom comments formatting
This feature can be customized from Tools | Options | Environment | Fonts and Colors | VSCommands.Comment.*
This feature is available in VSCommands Pro.