If you often work on different parts of an application with different groups of document tabs opened, you may find my new Favorite Documents extension helpful:
Favorites menu in Visual Studio 2010
Favorite Documents lets you create links to frequently used code files and then quickly open them as a group or individually from the Favorites menu in Visual Studio 2010.
Home page: Favorite Documents.
Direct download link: Favorite Documents v1.0.
I’ve added the ability to highlight tabs with different colors from Tabs Studio context menu:
Highlighting colors in Tabs Studio context menu
<Style TargetType="TabsStudio:TabInternals" BasedOn="{StaticResource DefaultTabInternalsStyle}">
<Style.Triggers>
<DataTrigger Binding="{Binding Path=(TabsStudioMarker:Properties.HighlightIndex),
RelativeSource={RelativeSource AncestorType=TabsStudio:Tab}}" Value="1">
<Setter Property="Background">
<Setter.Value>
<LinearGradientBrush StartPoint="0,0" EndPoint="0,1">
<GradientStop Color="Transparent" Offset="0.9"/>
<GradientStop Color="Green" Offset="0.9"/>
</LinearGradientBrush>
</Setter.Value>
</Setter>
</DataTrigger>
</Style.Triggers>
</Style>
In this Marker update I’ve also removed a small gradient transition in underline, fixed occasional loss of first tab highlighting after loading a solution in VS 2010, slightly changed highlight commands placement in the context menu.
Download link: Marker v1.0.4.
When using the separate tabs window in stack mode, sometime you can open more tabs than fit in the docked window. One possible solution is to add a vertical scrollbar to scroll through the windows:
Tabs window with a vertical scrollbar
<Style TargetType="TabsStudio:TabsHost" BasedOn="{StaticResource DefaultTabsHostStyle}">
<Setter Property="Template">
<Setter.Value>
<ControlTemplate TargetType="{x:Type TabsStudio:TabsHost}">
<ScrollViewer HorizontalScrollBarVisibility="Disabled"
VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto">
<Grid>
<Rectangle Width="{TemplateBinding Width}"
Height="{TemplateBinding Height}"
Fill="{TemplateBinding Background}"/>
<ContentPresenter/>
</Grid>
</ScrollViewer>
</ControlTemplate>
</Setter.Value>
</Setter>
</Style>
I’ve added some animation when a tab is created, destroyed, changes width or position in the Stable tabs layout. To turn it on, check the new Animate tab movement option:
Animate tab movement option
See Tabs animation demo how it looks like.
Tabs animation duration is controlled by the TabsAnimationDuration property on the Tabs control. When you check the Animate tab movement option, the duration is set to 0.4 s. You can override this value with the following custom style:
<Style TargetType="TabsStudio:Tabs" BasedOn="{StaticResource DefaultTabsStyle}">
<Setter Property="TabsAnimationDuration" Value="0:0:1.4"/>
</Style>
Download link: Tabs Studio v2.3.7.
When opening, closing and editing Visual Studio documents, tabs change positions to be always visible in minimum number or rows. And the more tabs change positions and rows, the more our workspace becomes disorganized. I’ve created the new Stable tabs layout that reduces excessive tab movements:
Stable tabs layout option
While previous layouts were just wrappers around standard WPF panels, the Stable layout is implemented completely in Tabs Studio and provides ample potential opportunities for customization. The most noticeable visual distinction of the new layout is not justified last row. It doesn’t add stability, but I think is more visually pleasant:
All tab rows justified except the last one
The first actual stability feature is RowBuffer. RowBuffer is space reserved on each tab row that keeps tabs on their positions when some of them slightly increase width. For example, default 30 pixels of RowBuffer can absorb additional width of a close tab button when you switch to this row and 3 document modification asterisks.
You can adjust the RowBuffer value with the following style:
<Style TargetType="TabsStudio:Tabs" BasedOn="{StaticResource DefaultTabsStyle}">
<Setter Property="RowBuffer" Value="20"/>
</Style>
Another stability feature keeps tabs on their positions when some of them become shorter. When it is possible to reduce number of rows due to shorter tabs, a new arrangement is delayed until the next major relocation.
Events that trigger major relocation are tab creation, tab removal, window size change. Events that don’t lead to tab rearrangement (within limits of RowBuffer) are tab selection, document modification, tab extension creation or removal.
For a new Tabs Studio installation Stable is the default layout now. I’m thinking about removing Standard and Wrap layouts in the future.
Download link: Tabs Studio v2.3.6.
Usually you set color for tabs using the tab name and project name regular expressions in the Tab Coloring Rule dialog. If you want to color tabs by type (for example .cs or .xaml) you can use the document paths regex. But then there are form designer [Design] tabs that can’t be matched using the existing rules.
I’ve added the Tab extensions regex rule that complements the Tab name regex rule and lets you assign tab background depending on opened extensions in a tab group:
Tab coloring rule for designer tabs
Designer tabs with a special color
I’ve added the TabExtensions property to the Tab control that consists of the extensions list separated by ‘$’. For example, “Form2 .cs .cs [Design]” tab has “TabName=Form2″ and “TabExtensions=.cs$.cs [Design]$”. Note, that a single tab like “Class1.cs” still has the name “Class1″ and the extensions “.cs$”.
Download link: Tabs Studio v2.3.5.
It is a common convention to have interface file names started with ‘I’ (like IService.cs) and implementation files named the same excluding the first ‘I’ (like Service.cs). Would be nice to have them on one tab. Below is a solution copied from the recent discussion on the Tabs Studio mail list.
It is easy to group such files, the problem is how the result looks like. For example, the best title grouping regex for this task I can think
of is:
(?<Ext>I(?<Name>.+?)\.cs)|(?<Name>(.*[/\\])?.+?)(?<Ext>\..+)
It nicely groups two files as “Service .cs IService.cs”, but when IService.cs is the single file in a tab it will be displayed as “ServiceIService.cs” (and IInterface1.cs will be displayed as “Interface1IInterface1.cs”):
Grouping class and interface tabs using only title grouping regex
To improve interface tab name representation I’ve created the additional ITransform add-in to transform interface titles after grouping. With this add-in for the IService.cs and Service.cs pair a grouped tab will be “Service .cs Interface” and a single interface tab will remain “IService.cs”:
Grouping class and interface tabs using title grouping regex and the ITransform add-in
ITransform still requires setting up the special interface grouping regex first. Add the following title grouping regex section:
I(?<Name>[A-Z].+?)\.(?<Ext>.+)
For example, if you use default title grouping settings, your combined title grouping regex will be:
I(?<Name>[A-Z].+?)\.(?<Ext>.+)|(?<Name>(.*[/\\])?.+?)(?<Ext>\..+)
Download link: ITransform v1.0.0.
I’ve added saving of the highlighted tabs list when you close Visual Studio and restoring highlighting when the solution is opened the next time. This information is stored per solution in a [solution name].marker.tss file in a solution directory along with the sln and suo files.
Download link: Marker v1.0.2.
One of the most suggested features for Tabs Studio is to automatically open corresponding files (e.g. when Class.cpp is opening automatically open Class.h). It is also one of the hardest to make right. More than a year ago Andreas Guenther wrote the first implementation of this extension and after numerous private tests and a lot of feedback I present you AutoOpener.
The AutoOpener add-in uses the same infrastructure that shows Open commands when you right click on a tab and in the core of the TabsStudio.Connect.OpenCorrespondingFile command. Usage of AutoOpener indicated that liberal default tab grouping options (letting files with any extension to be opened) cause strange errors from Visual Studio when opening a code file that happens to share the same name with a project or a resource file. These errors are fist of all puzzling (strange error code after just double-clicking a file) and then require to manually add excluding rules (for project and resource files) to title or path grouping options. To make AutoOpener behavior more predictable I’ve added the explicit list of extensions that are considered for opening:
AutoOpener's default allowed extensions list
You can add and remove extensions from this list going to AutoOpener options, but note that if an extension is blocked for grouping in Tabs Studio options it will not be opened automatically no matter if it on AutoOpener‘s list or not.
Download link: AutoOpener v1.0.3 (requires Tabs Studio v2.3.4).
If you prefer keyboard to navigate between tabs, the Navigator add-in provides NavigateToNextTab and NavigateToPreviousTab commands. Plus core Tabs Studio provides NextTabExtension and PreviousTabExtension commands to switch between windows in a tab group. Using these commands you can switch to any open document using keyboard, but it requires four keyboard shortcuts.
I’ve added two more NavigateToNextWindow and NavigateToPreviousWindow commands to Navigator. These commands first switch to the next document in the selected tab and then switch to the nearest document in the next tab. Now you can switch to any open document using keyboard with only two keyboard shortcuts:
Window navigation commands from Navigator
Download link: Navigator v1.0.6.
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