“Hidden Secrets” of the Visual Studio .NET debugger? [closed]

Answer 1

$exception in the watch window will show the exception that is currently being processed even if you don't have a catch that assign the Exception instance to a named variable.

Answer 2

Things I use often:

• Click the menu item "Debug | Exceptions" (or Ctrl-D, E for short) and you can enable breaking at the time that any exception is thrown, or choose to not break on certain exceptions.

• You can set up the debugger to download some of the framework source code and symbols from a MS server and step into the framework code. (Some libraries, like System.ServiceModel, are not yet available). It in the Options windows under Debugging. See MSDN How-To.

• You can use the VS.NET debugger to debug Javascript running in IE. You just need to install the IE javascript debugger, and enable javascript debugging in IE's settings. Then on a JS error it will pop up a "do you want to debug" dialog box, and you can choose to debug in VS.NET.