VS2010 开发环境设置

Customizing the Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions

How to Customize the Development Environment for

Visual Studio Express

The Visual Studio Express product line provides users with most of the same

customization options that are found in the full-featured versions of Visual Studio 2005.

You can take the default development environment and change colors, remove and add

toolbars, add line numbers, modify keyboard shortcuts, and even export your changes to a

file that can be shared with others. Sharing even works between different Visual Express

versions, which means that a C# user could share common settings with a Visual Basic

.NET user.

Why would you want to take the time to customize your own development environment?

There are a number of possibilities such as to make it look unique, reduce clutter,

increase readability for a presentation, and organize tools to fit your work style.

Screenshot - Customized Visual C# Express IDE

The screenshot above shows an example of a customized Visual C# Express development

environment. As you can see, the text editor colors have been modified, line numbers

added, and all toolbars removed. Other non-visual changes have been made as well, such

as to the available debugging options. In the following sections we will explore

customization in more detail.

Customizing the Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions

Contents Customizing options Customizing Toolbars and Commands Keyboard shortcuts Importing and exporting settings How to reset settings from the command line Additional resources

Customizing options

Options can be viewed and modified in any Express product by selecting Tools | Options

from the main menu. The Express product line provides a streamlined view of options by

default, with some differences between each version.

Although each version of Visual Studio Express has some variation in the default options,

layout, and toolbars, there are still many similarities. To see all of the available options,

select the Show All Settings checkbox at the bottom of the Options window.

Screenshot - Options window for Visual Basic Express showing all options and settings Customizing the Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions

Here is a table of some select settings that can be modified using the Options window:

Option Description Location in Options Window Use tabs or windows Environment|General X X X

Fonts and colors Environment|General X X X

AutoRecover save interval Environment|AutoRecover X X X

Keyboard shortcuts Environment|Keyboard X X X

Show output window during

build Projects and Solutions|General X X X

VB-specific project options

(Option Explicit, Option

Strict) Projects and Solutions|VB

Defaults X

C++ specific project options

(directories for include files,

library files, etc.) Projects and Solutions|VC++

Directories X

Enable line numbers Text Editor|All Languages|General X X X

Change tab and indentation

size Text Editor|All Languages|Tabs or

Text Editor followed by specific

language X X X

Debugging options Debugging X X

Customizing Toolbars and Commands

Now let’s take a look at how you can customize the toolbars, menus, and commands that

are made available within the development environment. Available commands can be

placed in a menu, a toolbar, or even both at the same time. To start customizing, select

Tools | Customize from the main menu. Alternatively, you can select View | Toolbars |

Customize from the main menu.

Customizing the Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions

Screenshot - Customize window allows you to customize Toolbars and Commands

Once the Customize window is open, tabs for customizing Toolbars and Commands are

made available. In addition, the actual toolbars and main menu are now in a design mode

that allows adding and deleting commands, moving commands, changing command

images, and more. For example, the screenshot below shows that I can delete the

Properties Window command from the View menu by simply right-clicking on it and

selecting Delete from the context menu that appears.

Customizing the Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions

Screenshot - Deleting a command from a menu

The Toolbars tab of the Customize window allows you to enable or disable any of the

default toolbars by selecting or de-selecting the associated checkbox. Keep in mind that

toolbar changes take effect immediately. You can even create your own toolbar and put

only the commands that you want on it.

The Commands tab of the Customize window lists all available commands for categories

such as Build, Data, Debug, Tools, and so on. This tab is your toolbox for customizing

your main menu or toolbars. To add a command to the menu or a toolbar, simply drag the