Should Visual Studio support dragging code files onto a secondary monitor?

Article
05/18/2004

I want to get a sense of how many people use Visual Studio with a mulit-monitor display. I’ve seen some feedback in my blog comments requesting that we add a feature to drag a code file onto the secondary monitor. Currently, in order to have source code on both monitors, you have to expand VS across the two monitors.

Let me know if you use VS with Multi-Monitors.
Let me know if you want to have support dragging code files onto the secondary monitor.
Let me know if it came between having support for dragging code files onto secondary monitor and another feature, what would that other feature be?

I’m merely collecting this data as an experiement. It’s kinda late in the game over here, so no promises.

thanks!

Comments

Anonymous
May 18, 2004
YES!!! This would be huge! I'd love being able to look at multiple files from the same project in vs.net at the same time. I use my laptop monitor and a flat panel display for development most of the time, i frequently find myself flipping back & forth between code files in vs.net.

First Question: Yes
Second Question: Yes
Third Question: (disclaimer, this isn't an original idea, i think i saw it somewhere {possibly even vs.net?}) It would be very cool if the tabs for the open documents orded themselves in a last or most recently used order. For example I've got 23 open code files, it gets hard to manage/find my way around.

Scott
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
Absoutely!

The previous comments pretty much cover what I had to say ;) But enhancing the multi-monitor experience should be a priority in Longhorn also..
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
Yes and yes. It should also support the code to be developed on one machine while testing it on another machine.
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
I too find myself constantly flicking between source files in VS when ideally what I want to do is to place source files side-by-side. Editing multiple files using one monitor is cumbersome.

I have dual displays and would love to drag a file to the second monitor for editing. Pretty much all the above applies!
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
I can't tell you how often I've wished I could tear an editor off onto another monitor...
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
Yes, yes, and I don't know what the other options are.
I often have multiple source files visible, and have currently resorted to having two code files visible on my main monitor either horz or vert, and all my dockable windows floating in a single "dockpane" of sorts... I make them all floating on my second desktop, then assemble them into a single structure.

I would LOVE to have my help or other code file up on the second window EASILY.
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
I'd like to drag text from the code editor and create little snippet files on a folder =)
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
Sounds like it would be a great option, currently I have my monitors set up as:
Left: Reference/Test Window
Middle: Main code window
Right: All my toolbars/panels/explorer windows.

So I don't know how often I would use that, but it would still be cool. What irks me, is if I stretch a window to span 2 monitors, and at some point lock the computer, when I come back and unlock it, the window has shrunk back to 1 monitor.
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
I only recently acquired a second monitor at work and it's taken me some time to adjust my working practices to take advantage of this. It's amazing how used you get to having windows in certain locations when you're working, and I've found it's taken me some time to recondition my brain :)

My current setup has the main vs.net window with code covering the whole of the primary monitor. The secondary monitor has the Solution/Class and Resource views sharing one toolwindow (taking up about 1/4 of the width on the left) with the rest of the space taken up with another toolwindow (with Output, Pending Checkins, Find Results etc etc). One of the reasons for this setup is that my secondary monitor is limited to 1280x768, so if I maximise an application, it won't fill both displays fully.

I'm not sure I would find having 2x code views particularly handy for day-to-day work. I think I'd find it quite hard to context switch across displays, but this is probably because I'm still getting used to having two screens. I have a tendancy to "lose" files even when they're clearly visible in the tabs at the top of the screen, and having two code views might compound this :)

What would be handy about having two code views:

) Side by side view of implementation/header files. I often use Alt-W,2 to swap between files I'm currently working on. Having the header open on the second display for reference/quick changes to declarations could be handy.
) Side by side view of Design/Code view for Forms etc.
*) Being able to drag code between views on different screens could be very useful at times - e.g. when moving methods/fields when refactoring. Might well be quicker than cut/swap window/paste

So for me, having the ability to drag code files to a secondary display isn't a must-have feature, but that could be because I'm relatively new to the world of multi-monitors. Having said that, there's all manner of snazzy features that you never really learn to appreciate until you've given them some time to get used to, so if there is time to implement this, I won't be complaining :)
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
Everything's already been said here, but:
Question 1: Yes!
Question 2: Yes!
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
another dual monitor user here. let's see more apps start taking advantage of dual monitors properly!
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
Emphatic Yes
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
This would be a very nice feature to have... I have 3 monitors, and being able to pull code to one of the other two would be very handy
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
Hi Sarah,

Each developer in our company (all five of us) uses a multi-monitor display.

The ability to drag code files onto the secondary monitor would certainly be a welcome addition. To be honest though, this isn't a make or break feature for us. I'd rather have a super stable feature limited visual studio.net than a sort of stable feature loaded visual studio.net.

I can see the ability to "drag-out" source files becoming more and more usefull as time goes on though. Especially as more and more of Microsoft's tools get integrated into VS.NET (i.e. SQL Server Workbench, etc).
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
I use a dual display daily for development, and I would enthusiastically welcome such a feature.
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
There are 6 of us (5 dev + 1 photoshop guy) in our office that use multiple display. Applications that take advantage of multiple montors would help with productivity at times.
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
Yes!
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
ABSOLUTELY! What I would really like is to set the monitor that debugging happens on.

It would also be great if you could put in a setting so that your code showed up on one monitor and your forms on another monitor so that you could see the form and edit the code at the same time!

I couldn't live without multi-mon while developing, it saves SO MUCH TIME! Please make VS.net more friendly!

(I'll trade Generics for Multi-mon!)

I'll trade partial classes for Edit and Continue in C# :)
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
Absolutely. I use two monitors, and this feature would be a HUGE productivity enhancer.
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
I have a different Multi-Monitor suggestion.

I use VS with Multi-Monitors, stretched across 2 and sometimes 3 monitors horizontally. I use MDI mode (no tabs). When opening a new code window, the size of the new window is based on a percentage of the current height and width. This gets really irritating because that is always too wide and I have to resize each window after opening. I would propose that a new code window should always be contained within one monitors real estate.
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
Yes and Yes.... and for the 3rd question... nope, no VS feature I'd rather have :)
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
Absolutely. As it is, I have VW.NET on my main screen and NUnit GUI on my secondary (I'm not partial to the NUnit add-in). Any sort of improvement with this would be wonderful.
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
This would be a very nice feature to have, I curently just use the screen splitter when I am dealing with long source files but that definetly is a good idea.
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
Yes, Yes and Yes.

I work with 3 main monitors (and another 2 laptops & a tablet), so the more support from VS - the better!

More info at http://weblogs.asp.net/asanto/archive/2004/04/13/112527.aspx
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
I'll just be one of many to say YES! on all your questions.

Multi monitor support definitely has made my development time and environment a lot smoother.
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
Yes, No and n/a.

I use two monitors for developing with Visual Studio: the main one is where I do all of my editing. The secondary one (on the right) is where I keep the MSDN Library , IE and RSS Bandit.

I can see the attraction of being able to spread the files being edited between multiple monitors, but it's not something I'm personally bothered about.
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
Hi Sara,

Awesome idea. I would love to have dual monitor support in VS. I find that when a solution allows for multiple projects that I open each project separately (in two different instances of VS) so I can put them on seaprate monitors. However, when you're working with two different items in the same project I've always wished I could open one code page on one monitor and another on a second monitor (or UI on one monitor and code on another) etc. For now it becomes a big pain flipping back and forth between the two code pages. I would love to be able to have that support built in so I could have it on both monitors and see it all side-by-side.

-Ryan
Anonymous
May 18, 2004

Yes
2) Yes
3) I would be willing to give up improved Server Explorers or Copy Web imporvments.

My big usage scenarios:

- Help on another monitor
- Code on another monitor (i use Web Matrix now)
- Solution Explorer / Properies tab on another monitor (currently expand UI so the Solution Explorer and Props are on the second monitor)

Anonymous
May 18, 2004
I too would like to see the multi-monitor support. I find that I can't program anymore without at least two displays. As for what I'd give up to have it, well there are a lot of great features going into this release that I'm already sold on and I probably wouldn't give up, so I could wait for Orcas to have true multi-monitor support, plus this would give your team the time to get it just right.
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
Let me clarify one small point...

For #3, i meant, "if it came between having two potential new features, like dragging code files to second monitor versus being able to maximize a tool window on the second montior", which of the two would you choose.

Also, I know a lot of the time i want to maximize tool windows on the second montior. Let me know if you feel this way too.

thanks,
-sara
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
Sara wrote:
Also, I know a lot of the time i want to maximize tool windows on the second montior. Let me know if you feel this way too.

I do this all the time :) It's not very hard to implement it as an addon to Windows. Just create a windows service which is allowed to interact with the desktop and have it register a hotkey (I use ctrl+| as hotkey since it's quite similar to alt+tab...). When you hit the shortcut the service should get the foreground window and if it's not maximized then maximize it, otherwise move it over to the next monitor.

Of course I've written such a service and if I had some time to fix some small bugs I would post it somewhere :) But if you're interested contact me and I'll e-mail the source to you (just remove the obvious parts of the e-mail adress of the url for this comment...)

I use the program daily and the bugs doesn't cause any BSODs, but for example it doesn't handle three monitors good :(
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
YES (Sorry for yelling, but that would be extremely useful)
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
What I miss (from Delphi) is having the form on one monitor and the code on the other - save having to remember a lot of stuff.
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
I've got dual Sony LCDs, but don't have Visual Studio. what's that beta id for testing again? :D

cb <at> wasteland <dot> org
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
I am using two monitor and planning to get third one.
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
I'm using only one 19' monitor. May be because of this I don't understand why do you need to spend resources to provide these features instead of something more important. Sorry to dissapoint you.
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
I would love Multi-mon support in VS, but don’t limit it to just code files. As some have pointed out, the ability to move any window to the other monitor would be great. If I could move my watch + output window to my other monitor during debug I would be very happy.

Supporting multi-mon in a generic way that supports all VS windows would be an amazing addition...

[Disclaimer: My day job is work on the contact experience in Longhorn, but I do code at nights and on the weekends.]
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
Point of Origin » Multi-Monitor Support in Visual Studio
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
I would like to be able to tile additional tool windows correctly in the second monitor and support for set-ups that have different resolutions on each monitor. This would allow me to dock tool windows correctly and reliably on the second low resolution monitor.
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
Yes... Virtually my entire team uses multiple monitors. Please provide multiple monitor support in VS.NET.

The only other feature more important would be method interception attributes. :)
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
Absolutely YES to multi-monitor support!!!
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
Yes, I love dual monitors. See My Current Hardware at http://www.tonytoews.com/hardware.htm I mostly work in Microsoft Access with the occasional VB utililty and some ASP.Net stuff.

For Access work I'm thinking of doing what Allen Browne has done with LCD monitors. The left hand monitor is in standard landscape mode but the right hand monitor is in portrait mode. All the code goes on the right hand monitor. And now you can see a whole lot more code.

And I can see using a third monitor down the road for help files, MSDN and other code searches, email, whatever.
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
Sara,

>> Let me know if you use VS with Multi-Monitors.

yes. can't imagine to develop with a single monitor.

>> Let me know if you want to have support dragging code files onto the secondary monitor.

thats not very important to me. i have online help, project view and stuff like that on the second monitor.

>> Let me know if it came between having support for dragging code files onto secondary monitor and another feature, what would that other feature be?

anything. don't care about draggin code to the 2nd monitor.

WM_MY0.02$
thomas woelfer
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
I use two monitors the same way most of the other commenters do: code on main window, toolbaars (solution expolerer, output, tasks etc) on the secondary display. After all those tool windows I have about 1/3 of the secondary display for other necessities like MSDN or Messenger.

I don't think I would often use secondary display for code editing or viewing, but it wouldn't harm to have that kind of feature.
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
Yes & Yes.

But please keep in mind different resolutions. I run VS on my main monitor (1600x1200) so I can see at least a little bit more. The spanning two screens is just annoying.
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
Yes, it will be very(!) useful. When you are working on a code, you are working with several files.
Anonymous
May 18, 2004
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 19, 2004
Yup, I use dual monitors with Visual Studio. For editing code I have one screen for code and one screen for floating windows. For debugging, I have Visual Studio on one screen and the app on the other. I am not so bothered about having two code windows because I haven't needed that yet. The only extra feature I would like would be for tool windows to snap to each other and the screen edge when they are floating (so I can layout the floating windows on my second screen quickly).

Also, if you could change the minimum requirements for Visual Studio to be at least 3 monitors that would help a lot when I try and convince people I need another monitor.

Jonathan
Anonymous
May 19, 2004
I use dual monitors with VS.NET both at work and at home. I can't live without it.

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Can't think of any, so yah, that one would be great :)
Anonymous
May 19, 2004
I use dual monitors with VS.NET. I can't live without it.

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. number one in my book
Anonymous
May 19, 2004
Yeah, I'm one of those people that has to stretch the vs window across both monitors and put the files side by side. It's pretty annoying, so being able to undock one of those windows would be awesome. Most of the time my second monitor is showing MSDN, but every now and again I want to use it that way.

IN FACT, I would love it even more if I could look at different parts of the SAME file on both monitors; I use the horizontal split thing very often to look at different parts of the same file all the time, but you can't see much by the time you split in half, plus toolbars, etc.
Anonymous
May 20, 2004
I have a single 21" monitor so dual monitor support is not important to me.
Anonymous
May 20, 2004
Yes!

What was the motivation behind not including this in the first place?
Anonymous
May 20, 2004
I do use vs on two monitors, and even tried to simulate having the aspx and the cs code behind on separate vertical tab groups; however, making a change on one vertical tab group doesn't get refreshed in the other window (in my case, on screen 2) until it is clicked... I'd love for it to have live updates.
Anonymous
May 20, 2004
Yes
Yes

Dual monitor setup is very adictive. I have had dual monitors at home for the longest time and have gotten some friends and family to adopt the idea. I finaly got it set up at work and another developer has done the same.

One you have both, you hate to give it up. It changes the way you work.
Anonymous
May 20, 2004
I think that it would be great to be able to create another Tab Group on a secondary monitor. Also I wish that XP would add a task bar to secondary monitors that has minimized window placeholders for applications running on that monitor. I downloaded a utility that does this but it is a little flaky.
Anonymous
May 20, 2004
Yes, that would increase my productivity dramatically.
Anonymous
May 20, 2004
I'd love it. I wouldn't trade my dual monitors for anything.

Except, does anyone else see a shadow of the VS.net appearing between the two monitors after running the debugger? It's a "white" window that covers the lower half of my secondary monitor. If you close that window, your VS window closes. VS is the only thing that does this on my machine.
Anonymous
May 20, 2004
Short answer: I would not put source files on a secondary monitor.
Long answer:
In my setup, my primary monitor is in front of me, and due so space limitations the secondary is about 70 degress to the right. When I'm in coding mode, I want everything on the primary monitor; I'm fast enough with the keyboard that Ctrl+Tabbing among source files isn't a problem.
When in debug mode (this is in VC 6 BTW, I don't use VC 7) I float many of the debug windows to the secondary monitor. It's the ones I want open but don't look at too often - output (for trace messages). call stack, memory, and CPU registers. The source, watch, and variables windows stay on the primary since I look at those all the time.
Anonymous
May 20, 2004
I only use one monitor, the rest of the source I juggle in memory :)
Anonymous
May 20, 2004
yes and yes
Anonymous
May 20, 2004
I'm going to agree with the point that any VS window should be mobile on multiple monitors. I have three monitors running and will often open another instance of VS on monitor two to allow editing between files.

I can't imagine any of the VS sub-windows that wouldn't benefit from the option to do this.
Anonymous
May 20, 2004
Yes, most definately! Though, i've only just started using the multimonitor setup. But I can already see the benefits of working that way. And my job requires me to do more than just code, so dual monitors is definately quite useful (VPC running on one monitor, VS.NET in the other).
Anonymous
May 20, 2004
Yes, dualing since late 1980's (Macintosh II era)
Yes please.
Anonymous
May 20, 2004
Yes.
Yes.
(
But...
What does it mean to my ALT-TAB ordering and-or ctrl-TAB ordering?,
Does it apply only to source windows, what about other undocked windows.
What about when I use full screen mode to see somebody's spaghetti code more clearly can I get another source file on the other monitor full screen?
Will it remember the source files position from session to session?
)

Anything that is new special wizard templates stuff where I'm going to have to learn how it saves me time.
Anonymous
May 22, 2004
Sure YES...
I suposed that a multimonitor was a 'must' feature in this new release ...

Anyways, if you are going to implement it, keep in mind that, while tracing a program should be a option to choose which monitor the code and the running program appear. This way, you could "edit and continue" your code in one monitor and see the results in the other.

keep it up !!!
Anonymous
May 23, 2004
Yes
Yes
Any tab should be able to be dragged to another screen
Anonymous
May 24, 2004
Yes, I hate working at someone elses desk with only one monitor. I sometimes open another visual studio on the second monitor to edit/compare files.

Yes

Better diffing tools would be a real help. (I love Beyond Compare)
Anonymous
May 24, 2004

Yes, I use dual displays for developing at home and work.
2) Yes, it would be really useful.
3) Can't think of anything right now, except the one mentioned earlier: code and form visible at the same time, like in Delphi.

Anonymous
May 26, 2004
Questions
1) yes - I just wish I could find a third monitor.
2) yes - it would save me firing up jedit on a regular basis.
Anonymous
May 27, 2004
"Let me know if you use VS with Multi-Monitors."

Yes!

Let me know if you want to have support dragging code files onto the secondary monitor.

Yes Yes Yes! Please I'll do ANYTHING!

Let me know if it came between having support for dragging code files onto secondary monitor and another feature, what would that other feature be?

Realtime code visualisation in ORM, UML but also some 3d perspective visualisation similar to http://www.thinkmap.com/
Anonymous
May 29, 2004
I use a single monitor
No opinion
No opinion
Anonymous
July 10, 2004
>Should Visual Studio support dragging code files onto a secondary monitor?
YES!! :-)

>Let me know if you use VS with Multi-Monitors.
I can't - current versions do not seem to support this! Theoretically "yes" - if it let me (properly)

>Let me know if you want to have support dragging code files
>onto the secondary monitor.
Definately!

>Let me know if it came between having support for dragging code files onto
>secondary monitor and another feature, what would that other feature be?
There is NO other feature I want more!

I currently use two 19" LCDs, the primary in landscape mode and the secondary in document/portrait mode.
Anonymous
April 12, 2005
Yes, I was just considering getting dual monitors because I heard how much it would help a programmer. I am just graduating and applying all over the place :-) Especially Microsoft.

Anyways, i hooked up an old monitor to give it a shot and it doesn't work well at all with dual monitors. I am kinda dissapointed but Visual Studio's has been awesome so far I couldn't live without it. So I guess I can let this slide :-)
Anonymous
July 20, 2005
Last year, I did a&nbsp;very&nbsp;informal survey on how many people out there use Visual Studio on Multi-Monitor...
Anonymous
July 20, 2005
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
July 20, 2005
Update 7/20 @ 9:20pm:&nbsp; As i mentioned below in the comments, i think the best course of action is...
Anonymous
July 20, 2005
I forgot to mention that my comments about nView were in regard to VS.NET 2003. I hadn't tested VS.NET 2005 yet to see if it works with nView, and Beta 2 does indeed behave better.

It's a shame I can't do all my development in VS.NET 2005.
Anonymous
July 20, 2005
Update 7/20 @ 11:53pm: We have a bug:&nbsp;&nbsp;Please vote and leave your suggestions / feedback at...
Anonymous
August 22, 2005
Update 7/20 @ 11:53pm: We have a bug:&nbsp;&nbsp;Please vote and leave your suggestions / feedback at...
Anonymous
September 15, 2005
>if you use VS with Multi-Monitors.
yes.

>dragging code files onto the 2nd monitor.
yes.

>what would that other feature be?
why be bounded by an app's rectangle? why can't all VS windows be floating? code windows, data (output/varibles, ...), toolbars, ...
Anonymous
January 28, 2006
i would say yes to dragging code files to another monitor, but in all seriousness, i would be happy just having the tool windows able to maximize, that's my only big problem with the multi-monitor support right now is that anything not on the primary monitor must be both manually resized and floating.
Anonymous
June 22, 2006
I am actually using another editor on the secondary screen exactly because VS is (stupidly, I should say) missing this crucial feature. A Mac-oriented IDE, with a application toolbar separated from the tools and the editor windows would be ideal.
Anonymous
August 14, 2006
+1000000000000000000000000 for Multi-Monitor Layouts
Anonymous
September 05, 2006
YES!

Using 15" laptop display and 19" TFT monitor. Now I am running VS in 19" display to get max working space. I am using laptops keyboard, and this forces me to work in non ergonomical position, writing to laptop keyboard and looking monitor in left side of me. If I only cound drag editor to laptop's display and leave anything else to 19" display. Of course I cound get external keyboard, but it wastes table space and pushes laptop too far from 19" display.

One text editor is enough for me, but I would be nice if I could use text editor on laptop display, and use form editor on 19" because 15" is too small for forms.
Anonymous
May 11, 2007
PingBack from http://VaultOfThoughts.net/VisualStudioDualMonitorSupport.aspx
Anonymous
May 29, 2009
PingBack from http://paidsurveyshub.info/story.php?title=sara-ford-s-weblog-should-visual-studio-support-dragging-code-files

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Should Visual Studio support dragging code files onto a secondary monitor?

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