The Clipboard Ring

You now have the ability to collect multiple items in a Clipboard Ring (Office 2000
and Office XP have similar features).Whenever you cut or copy text, it goes into
the Clipboard Ring that is available on the Toolbox. You can see what is in the ring
by clicking the Clipboard Ring tab on the Toolbox. The ring holds the last fifteen
pieces of text that you cut or copied. To use the Clipboard Ring:
• Use Ctrl+Shift+V to paste the current item into the current document.
Repeatedly pressing Ctrl+Shift+V lets you cycle through the Clipboard Ring.
Each time you press Ctrl+Shift+V, the previous entry you pasted from the Clipboard
Ring is replaced by the current item.
Code Fragments
You can store any piece of code for instant reuse in the Toolbox. (Most people use
the General tab for this, but you can easily create your own tab by right-clicking
and choosing Add Tab from the context menu.) Storing code can be incredibly
useful since it is very common to repeatedly use the same code fragment inside
programs, and it is time consuming to constantly retype it. You store code fragments
by highlighting them and dragging them to the Toolbox (see Figure 2-12). The fragments
remain in the Toolbox until you delete them using the context menu. To reuse
code, simply drag a fragment back to the correct insertion point in the Code window,
or select the insertion point first and then double-click on the code fragment.
Figure 2-12. Code stored in the Toolbox
The VB .NET IDE: Visual Studio .NET
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Task List and TODO, HACK, and UNDONE Comments
Visual Studio now comes with a Task List feature that it inherited from Visual
InterDev and Visual J++. The idea is that you can list in a comment what you need
to do using special keywords right after the comment symbol. The built-in task
comments include TODO, HACK, and UNDONE. These comments will then show up
in the Task List window, which you display by choosing View|Other Windows|Task
List (or Ctrl+Alt+K). An example is shown in Figure 2-13.
Figure 2-13. Task List at work
Chapter 2
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You can set up a custom keyword for use in the Task List such as “FOR_KEN”
if it is code that Ken needs to look over. (Note that no spaces are allowed in Task
keywords, hence the underscore). To set up a custom keyword for the Task List:
1. Select Tools|Options|Environment|Task List.
2. Enter FOR_KEN for your custom token (this enables the Add button).
3. Select the priority level.
4. Click Add and then OK.
The Solution Explorer
The Solution Explorer window, shown in Figure 2-14, lets you browse the files that
make up your solutions. The default name of the solution is the same as the first
project created in it. As you can see in the Solution Explorer window, we also have
a project named vb_ide_01, which contains a file named Module1.vb.
Figure 2-14. Solution Explorer and Properties windows for File Properties