Some tips for using visual studio .net

Visual studio is a powerful IDE for languages such as C#, C++.net, VB.net. However, because there are so many functions, it's a bit difficult for a developer to become familiar with visual studio.

It's my pleasure to introduce some tips. Also any comment or suggestions are welcome.

• Do not create web projects, create library projects instead.

  When developing a web application, using visual studio will make the developing process a bit easier. However, it's much difficult to share web projects by a team, especially which are integrated with a source control system, since to open or compile a web project, IIS support is necessary.

  Library projects are easy to be opened or compiled, be shared by team members, and be easily integrated with source control system.

  To modify an existing web project as a library project, you can:

  • Open the project file(.csproj), find the attribute ProjectType of the VisualStudioProject\CSHARP element, modidy "Web" as "Local".
  • Delete the .webinfo file
• Using link files when you want to share some files among several projects.

  To realize what is a link file, you can visit this page: Share a GlobalAssemblyInfo.cs among projects in a solution.

  In the above article, I said that I didn't know how to create a link file from IDE directly. But actually, it's very simple. You can find that if you are carefull enough. To add a link file for a project,

  • Right click a project's title and select Add Existing Item.
  • Browse to the proper file, and on the Open button click on the little down arrow on the button and select Link File.