Tabs Studio Blog (organizing Visual Studio document tabs)

PriorityGroup, MvcGroup and Sorter add-ins group tabs together. PriorityGroup places important tabs to the beginning, MvcGroup groups ASP.NET MVC controller and view tabs near each other, Sorter groups tabs by project, path, part of the tab name, highlight index etc.

I’m introducing a new concept – super group to describe a group of tabs and customize its presentation. For example, the following screenshots show 3 super groups of tabs organized by project and separated with 20 pixels margin in horizontal and vertical tab layouts:

To make it all work, Tabs Studio core provides super group properties, Tabs Studio add-ins set these properties for super group tabs, the tabs style uses super group properties to define presentation, the tabs layout algorithm in Tabs Studio core adds margin between super groups.

Tabs SuperGroupMargin double property defines margin between super groups in pixels. Default value is 0 – no margin between groups. 20 is a good value to visually separate groups. A large value like 9999 with the horizontal tabs layout will force groups to take separate rows:

To set SuperGroupMargin use the following style:

<Style TargetType="TabsStudio:Tabs" BasedOn="{StaticResource DefaultTabsStyle}">
	<Setter Property="SuperGroupMargin" Value="20"/>
</Style>

Tab SuperGroupIsFirstTab and Tab SuperGroupIsLastTab properties are True for the first and the last tabs in each super group. They can be used to apply a special style to the beginning and the end of a super group.

Tab SuperGroupName property is a string assigned to each tab in a super group. PriorityGroup add-in sets it to “[PriorityGroup]”. MvcGroup – to “[MvcGroup]”. Sorter – to “[Sorter] <Rule name>” resulting in “[Sorter] Project”, “[Sorter] Tests” etc. It can be used to set a distinct background color to these groups.

In Sorter add-in you have an option to “Create super group” for certain rules. You don’t want groups when sorting tabs alphabetically, but grouping tabs by project, path or a part of tab name will help separate them visually:

I have ideas to add more functionality supporting super groups (context menu commands, styles) and I’m waiting for your feedback based on actual usage.

Download link: Tabs Studio v4.3.0.

Update: See Super commands for super groups for additional context menu commands.