Click here to Skip to main content
15,860,972 members
Articles / .NET / .NET4

Excellent Debugging Features in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2

Rate me:
Please Sign up or sign in to vote.
4.98/5 (19 votes)
4 Jan 2010CPOL2 min read 45.4K   24   9
This article describes how to use Pin/Unpin of Object/Variable Data Tip during debugging In Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Visual Studio 2010 IDE is simply great and came up with many new features within it. I have found one of the great and innovative features in Debugging style in VS 2010 Professional Beta 2 that is Pin/Unpin Object/Variable Inspect or Data Tip.

Image 1

Fig: Pined Inspect Value during Debugging

Pin Inspect Value During Debugging

While debugging in Visual Studio, we generally used mouse over on the object or variable to inspect the current value. This shows the current data items held by the inspected object. But this is for a limited time, as long as the mouse is pointed to that object those value will be available. But in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2, there is a great feature to pin and unpin this inspected value. We can pin as many of any object and their sub object value also. Please have a look into the below picture:

Image 2

Fig: Pined multiple inspect value during Debugging

When you mouse over on the inspect object, you will get pin icon with each and every object's properties, variable. Click on that pin icon to make it pined. Unless you manually close these pined items, they will be visible in the IDE.

Drag-Drop Pin Data Tip

We can easily Drag and drop the data tip inside the Visual Studio IDE. This is quite helpful if we need to see some object value list in the bottom section of code. We can easily drag those pined data tips over there.

Image 3

Fig: Drag and Drop pined content

Adding Comments

We can add comments on the pined data tip. For providing comments, we need to click on “Expand to see the comments” button. This will brings up an additional textbox to add comments.

Image 4

Fig: Comments on Pined Content

Below is some demonstration of Adding comments on pined inspect value:

Image 5

Fig: Comments on Pined Content

Last Session Debugging Value

This is another great feature of Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 debugging. If we pined some data tip during the debugging, the value of pined item will remain stored in a session. In normal mode of coding, if you mouse over the pin icon, it will show the details of the last debugging session value as the below picture:

Image 6

Fig: Showing last session value

Summary

Though the article is very small, I think this is very interesting and will help lots of newcomers of VS 2010 IDE. Please share your feedback and suggestions.

History

  • Initial post - 4th Jan 2010

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)


Written By
Technical Lead
India India
.NET Consultant | Former Microsoft MVP - ASP.NET | CodeProject MVP, Mentor, Insiders| Technology Evangelist | Author | Speaker | Geek | Blogger | Husband

Blog : http://abhijitjana.net
Web Site : http://dailydotnettips.com
Twitter : @AbhijitJana
My Kinect Book : Kinect for Windows SDK Programming Guide

Comments and Discussions

 
QuestionExcellent Debugging Features in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Pin
Tripat Bala Singh18-Oct-13 19:57
Tripat Bala Singh18-Oct-13 19:57 
GeneralCongrats on codeproject MVP for 2011 Pin
Sacha Barber8-Jan-11 20:49
Sacha Barber8-Jan-11 20:49 
GeneralRe: Congrats on codeproject MVP for 2011 Pin
Abhijit Jana8-Jan-11 21:53
professionalAbhijit Jana8-Jan-11 21:53 
Generalwell done Pin
Petr Pechovic2-Mar-10 3:16
professionalPetr Pechovic2-Mar-10 3:16 
GeneralRe: well done Pin
Abhijit Jana5-Mar-10 2:45
professionalAbhijit Jana5-Mar-10 2:45 
GeneralAmazing Pin
thatraja15-Jan-10 21:40
professionalthatraja15-Jan-10 21:40 
GeneralRe: Amazing Pin
Abhijit Jana15-Jan-10 21:41
professionalAbhijit Jana15-Jan-10 21:41 
GeneralGreat to see this Pin
Abhishek Sur4-Jan-10 6:59
professionalAbhishek Sur4-Jan-10 6:59 
GeneralRe: Great to see this Pin
Abhijit Jana4-Jan-10 7:15
professionalAbhijit Jana4-Jan-10 7:15 
Thanks Abhishek. Big Grin | :-D

I have installed VS 2010 Prof. Beta 2 just few days back and got this features. Smile | :)

Abhijit Jana | Codeproject MVP
Web Site : abhijitjana.net
Don't forget to click "Good Answer" on the post(s) that helped you.

General General    News News    Suggestion Suggestion    Question Question    Bug Bug    Answer Answer    Joke Joke    Praise Praise    Rant Rant    Admin Admin   

Use Ctrl+Left/Right to switch messages, Ctrl+Up/Down to switch threads, Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right to switch pages.