Document Outline Window in VS 2005 is a Must When Doing WinForm UI Development

There are so many new things to play with in VS 2005 that it's easy to miss, or forget about, some cool stuff.

For example, if you're doing UI Development in VS 2005 make sure you turn on/open/view the Document Outline window. Since it's not open by default it's easy to miss/skip/forget about.

View menu, Other Windows, Document Outline (CTRL + ALT + T)

After using it just a few times I'm wondering what I did without...…

Here is a screenshot of the Document Window from the Outlook UI example.




In short, it provides a hierarchical view of all the controls on a form, including those that might not visible or easily selectable. You can select a given control, see its selection in the Design window, edit properties, etc. So for example, if the item you select in Document Outline window is a sub-sub-menu item, the menustrip in the Designer will expand to show you the control.

Here's an example of how in the Document Outline window I selected the "optionsToolStripMenuItem1" item. When I selected it, the Designer window automagically opened the Tools/Find menu and selected the menu Options item.



And of course it works both ways. So as you select controls in the Designer, the Document Outline window stays in sync.


On a side note, I really don't care about all that's being said about the bugs in VS 2005... This thing just rocks...!

(But a hotfix rollup between now and SP1 would be nice... ;)