Tabs Studio Blog (organizing Visual Studio document tabs)

Instead of a submenu, I’ve created a top level tab context menu selection for Marker highlighting colors:

It will be easier to mark tabs with different colors, but I’m a little worried that this menu item is now too eye catching. Please, let me know what do you think.

I’ve added more organization to add-in settings storage and activation configuration.

Previously add-ins stored global settings in the add-ins directory near the binary files. Now I’ve added the GetAddinSettingsDirectory method to the ITabsStudioEngine interface providing a directory near general Tabs Studio settings. It makes possible to have separate add-in settings for SSMS 2008 and Visual Studio 2008.

Previously all .dll add-ins from the add-ins directory were loaded at startup. Now the list of active add-ins is stored near general Tabs Studio settings. You control this list as usual from Add-in Manager. It again makes now possible to have separate active add-ins for SSMS 2008 and Visual Studio 2008.

Export/import settings now save and restore all add-in settings as well.

Download link: Tabs Studio v2.6.0.

I’ve added the ability to sort tabs by project and extension:

A tab can have several extensions. To simplify sorting by extension behavior, only the first extension present on tab creation is used for sorting. You can select the Re-sort tabs context menu command to reset it.

For example, if Sorter is set up to sort only by extension and you open Form1.cs [Design] and stdafx.h:

Now you open stdafx.cpp. The stdafx tab keeps second position because “only the first extension present on tab creation is used for sorting” – in our case .h:

But if we Re-sort tabs, then .cpp becomes the primary extension for the stdafx tab and it moves before Form1:

Please, let me know if you find sorting by extension actually useful for your work 🙂

The updated Sorter add-in is included in Tabs Studio v2.5.7.

Depending on the project type you are working on, Tabs Studio settings and add-ins enabled, tabs may have a path in the tab name. The Sorter add-in compares tab names without path, so for an ASP.NET website project, tabs are sorted like this:

I’ve added the option to sort by full tab name. You can enable it in Tabs Studio – Add-in manager – Sorter options:

With this option enabled the same tabs are now sorted like this:

The updated Sorter add-in is included in Tabs Studio v2.5.6.

If you have a frequently accessed tab that is open for a long time, you may want to position it at the beginning of the list for easier access and better tabs organization. The new PriorityGroup add-in lets you add such tab to the priority group and will keep it at the beginning when this tab is open:

Priority tabs are identified by tab name and work globally across all solutions. To remove a tab from the priority group, right click on the tab and select Remove from priority group.

You can color priority tabs using the new TabsStudioPriorityGroup:Properties.Top property. For example, in the standard Tab Coloring Rule dialog, add the following custom condition:

<Condition Binding="{Binding Path=(TabsStudioPriorityGroup:Properties.Top),
  RelativeSource={RelativeSource Self}}" Value="True"/>

The Sorter add-in now recognizes if PriorityGroup is running and sorts priority tabs first:

PriorityGroup will be included in the next Tabs Studio release.

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”):

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”:

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:

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:

Download link: Navigator v1.0.6.