ScottGu on Visual Studio 2010: Multi-Monitor Support

This is the fourth article in a series of articles on the upcoming release of VS 2010 and .NET 4.
[ first , second , third ]

In this article I will talk about an important improvement made for the Visual Studio IDE, which, as far as I know, has already found a lot of fans - support for several monitors.

Using multiple monitors

VS 2008 placed all windows for documents, files or designers in one window - which means that you cannot divide these IDE elements into several monitors [approx. perev .: some elements of VS 2008 have the ability to undock from the main window, but all of them are not as important as the windows of documents or designers].

VS 2010 now allows editors, designers, and tool windows to be disconnected from the main application window and located anywhere on any monitor on your system. This will allow you to significantly improve the optimal use of the screen space and make the overall arrangement of working tools more convenient.

In order to appreciate the advantages of using multiple monitors, simply click on the tab of the document or window with tools and drag the window to a new location in the main window or outside it to any position on any monitor, as you want:



After that, you can drag the document or window back to the main window if you want to dock it back (or just select re-dock in the window title context menu).

Visual Studio remembers the last position of the documents on the screen, which means that you can close the projects and after opening them all the distribution of documents will be restored automatically.

Multiple Monitor Scenarios

Below, in a few screenshots, scenarios for using multiple monitors are presented (in addition, there are many other scenarios that are not presented here). For a more complete understanding, imagine that each window in the screenshots below is a separate monitor.

Multiple file code support

Shows how code files can be divided into multiple monitors. Below I placed the .aspx file in the main IDE window and rendered the code-behind file and a separate class file on a separate screen:

Tool windows support

Shows how any window from VS 2010 can be posted to different monitors. Below, I moved the test windows to a separate screen:

Design Support

Shows how designers in VS can be spaced across multiple monitors. Below, I transferred the WYSWIYG designer of WPF / Silverlight and the window with the properties to a separate screen (the code behind file remained on the main monitor). Please note that the window with VS 2010 properties now supports the built-in color, data binding, styles, brushes and many other editors for Silverlight and WPF applications (I will discuss this in subsequent articles):

Conclusion

If you are working with a computer that has multiple monitors, I think you will find very useful new VS features to support working with multiple monitors.

And if you don’t have several monitors yet, it may make sense to get them ... :-)

I hope this article was useful to you,
Scott