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.
