What are your most-recommended Visual Studio preferences?

Question

There are so many little options and settings within Microsoft Visual Studio. Which adjustments do you recommend to others?

Answer 1

Visible white space. (Edit -> Advanced -> View White Space)

The default color is too strong. I immediately change it to silver. (Tools -> Options -> Fonts and Colors -> Visible White Space).

On some displays, even silver is too strong, and I create a "light silver".

Answer 2

When designing a form:

View > Tab Order

Allows you you specify and control your TabIndexes easily (much more so than setting them by hand!)

Answer 3

Find and Replace window’s "Search Hidden Text" checkbox.

It's not really a preference but it is indispensable. It sure is frustrating when you don’t notice that it "magically" unchecked itself.

Answer 4

Un-Bold Brace Matching

Tools > Options

Environment > Fonts and Colors

Display items: Brace Matching (Hilight)

uncheck Bold

Answer 5

Several have mentioned custom keybindings. Here are handy default keybinding reference posters…

Microsoft Visual Basic Default Keybindings reference poster

A high quality, print-ready PDF containing the useful keybindings for developers that choose the Visual Basic developer profile in Visual Studio 2008 or use Visual Basic Express.

Microsoft Visual C# Default Keybindings reference poster

Visual C# in Visual Studio 2008 and Visual C# 2008 Express Edition Wall chart showing useful keyboard shortcuts for Visual C# programming language.

I like Microsoft's instructions:

1. Download and extract PDF
2. Send to favorite full color printer/copier
3. Hang on wall
4. Code
5. Smile

Answer 6

Its all about Resharper ;) Gives you tons of shortcuts which are so useful I can no longer work without them. I don't get on with the intellisense though, so I've turned that off.

This is incredibly useful, allows you to write underscores with the space bar when writing long test method names.