Ask anyone that knows me, and they will confirm that I hate the mouse.  This isn’t because I deny affection to objects that don’t look like their mammalian-named self, but rather for a much more simple and not-insane reason: I have terrible eyesight. 

Introduction

Thanks to a degenerative eye disease known as Choroideremia, I have learned to rely more on the keyboard which I can feel digital/static positions of keys relative to my fingers, than the much more analog/random position of the mouse.  Now, I would like to share some of the keyboard shortcuts with you now, as I believe that they not only increase my productivity, but yours as well once you know them (if you don’t already of course)...  I share one of my biggest tips for productivity in the conclusion at the end.

Visual Studio Key Shortcuts

Global Editor Shortcuts

These are shortcuts that are available from almost any application running in Windows, however are many times forgotten.

Global Application Shortcuts

These are shortcuts that are available from almost any application running in Windows, however are many times forgotten... Again...

Building Shortcuts

These are shortcuts that are focused on building and running a solution. These are not usable when the IDE is in Debug mode, as the shortcut changes by context.

Debugging Shortcuts

These are shortcuts that are used when debugging a solution.

Navigation Shortcuts

These are shortcuts that are used for navigating in the IDE or editor panel.

Testing Shortcuts

These are shortcuts that are used for running tests in the IDE. Please note, Visual Studio 2010 is all about context. If your caret is within a test method when you use one of these combinations, the combination will apply to that test. If your caret is within a test class, it will apply to that class. If the caret is outside of a test class, it will apply to all tests.

Substitute A for T from the preceding combos to run/debug ALL tests in the current context.

Substitute Y for T from the preceding combos to run/debug ALL impacted/covering tests for a method in the current context.

Advanced Editor Shortcuts

These are shortcuts that are used for more advanced editing in the editor window.

*Requires the Productivity Power pack from Microsoft.

Conclusion

This list is by no means meant to be exhaustive, but these are the shortcuts I use regularly every hour/minute of the day. There are still 100s more in Visual Studio that you can discover through the configuration window, or by tooltips.

Something that I started doing months ago seems to have interest in my office.. In my last post, I talked about how I hated a cluttered UI. One of the ways that I aimed to resolve that was by systematically cleaning up the toolbars week by week. First day, I removed ALL icons that I already knew shortcuts to, or would never use them (Undo in a toolbar?!). Then, every week from that point on, I make it a point to remove an icon/two from the toolbar and make an effort to remember its key combination. I gain extra space in the toolbar area, AND become more productive at the same time!

I hope that you found this article interesting or at least somewhat informative.. Maybe a shortcut or two you didn't know. I know some of them seem trivial, but I often see people going to the edit menu for Copy/Paste... Thought a refresher might be helpful!