Types of Windows

Types of Windows

There are two types of windows in the Visual Studio .NET IDE: tool windows

and document windows. Tool windows are listed in the View menu and change

based on the current application and the various add-ins you may have

installed. Document windows are those windows that you open in order to

edit some item in your project.

Tool Windows

The windows you have learned about in this chapter, including Toolbox,

Solution Explorer, Properties, Help, and Server Explorer, are all tool

windows. You can manipulate and arrange these tool windows in the

development environment in various ways. You can make these windows

automatically hide or show themselves. You can have a group of them display

in a tabbed format. You can dock them against the edges of the environment

or have them free-floating, by first selecting a window and then selecting

or clearing the Dockable option on the Window menu. You can even display

these windows on a second monitor if you have dual-monitor capability. (To

place tool windows on different monitors, use the display settings in the

Control Panel to set up your multiple-monitor configuration. You can then

drag the tool window to the other monitor. Only tool windows in a floating

mode can be moved outside of the application frame.)

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Normally, dockable windows snap into place when you drag them near a

dockable location. If you want to drag a window without having the window

snap into place, hold the Ctrl key down as you drag the window.

Tool windows provide some special features, including the following:

You can open multiple instances of certain tool windows. For example, you

can have more than one Web Browser window open at one time. Use the Window,

New Window menu to create new instances of windows.

Docked tool windows can be set to hide automatically when you select

another window. When you set a tool window to auto-hide, the window slides

to one of the sides of the development environment and only displays a tab

showing the window icon and name. You can click or hover over the window's

tab to unhide the window. Once you've opened the window, you can click the

pushpin icon on the title bar of the window to keep it open and docked.

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Double-click a docked window's title bar to undock the window. Double-click

it again to dock the window.

Document Windows

Visual Studio .NET uses document windows (as opposed to tool windows) for

all editable documents. These windows never dock. You'll use document

windows for all your code editing and all design surfaces. You will be

using many of the different document windows as you read through this book,

so we will not spend a lot of time on them right now.

Visual Studio .NET supports two different interface modes for document

windows: Multiple Document Interface (MDI) and Tabbed Documents. You can

change modes using the Tools, Options dialog box. Select the Environment

options and then the General pane. In MDI mode, the IDE provides a parent

window that serves as a visual and logical container for all tool and

document windows. Tabbed Documents mode displays all document windows

maximized, and a tab strip on top shows the names of the open documents for

quick navigation.

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Once you start playing with your windows, you may find that getting them

back to the default setting is rather difficult. Not to worry: Simply

select Tools, Options, Environment, Reset Window Layout to return to your

default window layout.