Lately my right hand has been sored due to too much use of the mouse. For the past 18 years I’ve been a heavy mouse user and yesterday I decided that was enough. I set a personal goal to use the mouse the least possible. Not an easy task in today’s computerized world, but since I’m a developer and spend about 85% of my time in Visual Studio, it certainly is doable. I must say that after 1 day of doing so, my pain has not gone away completely, but it has gotten better. I haven’t seen a drastic change in efficiency, but I guess I will see that as I get used to the shortcuts and get past the learning curb. So, without further do, I present to you a list of the my most used shortcuts with Visual Studio (Chrome, and Windows).
Debugging/Compiling
| CTRL + SHIFT + B | Build solution |
| SHIFT + F6 | Build current project |
| F5 | Start/Continue debugging |
| CTRL + F5 | Start without debugging |
| SHIFT + F5 | Stop debugging |
| F10 | Step over |
| F11 | Step in |
| SHIFT + F11 | Step out |
| ALT + A | Attach to process. Created by me (ref) |
| F9 | Toggle breakpoint |
Navigation
| CTRL + TAB | Move through opened tabs (and panes) |
| CTRL + SHIFT + TAB | Move through opened tabs (and panes) in reverse |
| CTRL + , | Navigate To (Extremely important for large solutions) |
| F12 | Go to definition |
| CTRL + F4 | Close current tab |
| CTRL + F | Find |
| CTRL + H | Find and replace |
| CTRL + SHIFT + F | Find in files |
| CTRL + SHIFT + H | Find and replace in files |
Editor
| CTRL + M + M | Collapse/expand current section. |
| CTRL + M + O | Collapse all |
| CTRL + M + L | Expand all |
Windows
| ALT + TAB | Change active program |
Google Chrome
| ALT + D | Highlight address bar |
| CTRL + T | New tab |
| CTRL + TAB | Move through opened tabs |
| CTRL + F4 | Close current tab |
I will update this list as I learn new keyboards and find them useful on my quest to avoid usage of the mouse as much as possible.
EDIT: as Joe Healy, aka DevFish, points out, Russ' ToolShed Network, Inc has a Windows Phone 7 app for Visual Studio shortcuts. Just search for Shortcuts VS in the MarketPlace
Happy programming (without the mouse, of course)!