October 26th, 2009

Box Selection and Multi-Line Editing

clip_image002I’m Brittany, a Program Manager on the Visual Studio Editor team.  Some of you may recognize me from Connect bugs, @VSEditor on Twitter, or the Visual Studio Editor blog, which has recently moved to its new home here at The Visual Studio Blog.  I’m responsible for a variety of Editor features, but most recently I designed the new-for-VS 2010 multi-line editing functionality in this post and video.

Box selection is back and better than ever for Visual Studio 2010 Beta2!  You can of course make, copy/paste, drag/drop, and delete box selections, just as in VS 2008.  But that’s not all.  For the first time, you can also insert and edit text on multiple lines.  Check out this video we’ve created to demo the new Box Selection and Multi-Line Editing functionality (this demo has video and audio, so plug in your headphones or turn up the sound):

We’ve also made a few changes to box selection that didn’t quite make it into Beta2:

  • In Beta2, indenting a box selection will indent the entire lines containing that box selection.  We have since changed it to indent only the box-selected text, which matches VS 2008 behavior.
  • In Beta2, pasting a box selection on a blank line will interleave the box-selected text with existing text.  We have since changed it to paste the box selection with newlines instead of interleaving, which matches VS 2008 behavior.

This is box selection’s first appearance in VS 2010 and multi-line editing’s Visual Studio debut, so we’d love to hear your feedback!  You can use any of several ways to share your thoughts, either about box selection or regarding other aspects of the Beta2 editor experience:

Whichever method you choose, I hope you’ll let us know what you think!

Brittany Behrens Program Manager, Visual Studio Editor Team

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Visual Studio has been around since 1997 when it first released many of its programming tools in a bundle. Back then it came in 2 editions - Visual Studio Professional and Visual Studio Enterprise. Since then the family has expanded to include many more products, tools, and services.

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