A lot of the tips in this book were either painfully obvious or were more "product reviews" of third-party tools than tips. But the format was easily accessible and enjoyable to read. There were enough real, productivity enhancing tips to make it worth the read.



The book was published with 2005 was in beta and so most of the tips are 2003-centric. I would like to see this book updated to be more of a "power-tips" book for 2005.



Overall--good read. It will help you use the dev environment more productively.

A lot of the tips in this book were either painfully obvious or were more "product reviews" of third-party tools than tips. But the format was easily accessible and enjoyable to read. There were enough real, productivity enhancing tips to make it worth the read.

The book was published with 2005 was in beta and so most of the tips are 2003-centric. I would like to see this book updated to be more of a "power-tips" book for 2005.

Overall--good read. It will help you use the dev environment more productively.

If you want to remain a Junior Programmer forever, then don't get this book. But if you want to really excel as a VS 2005 programmer, then you need to get this book. There is no fluff in this book at all. It is densly packed with a ton of useful details on the VS 2005 IDE. Not only do you learn the ins and outs of the IDE but it also guides you through several very useful 3rd party add-ins to VS.

This book is a terrific read and a great reference. I can't say that about too many books.

If you want to remain a Junior Programmer forever, then don't get this book. But if you want to really excel as a VS 2005 programmer, then you need to get this book. There is no fluff in this book at all. It is densly packed with a ton of useful details on the VS 2005 IDE. Not only do you learn the ins and outs of the IDE but it also guides you through several very useful 3rd party add-ins to VS.

This book is a terrific read and a great reference. I can't say that about too many books.

I would say this book is must-have for any die-hard .Net coder. Visual Studio.Net is a powerful IDE, and it is an expensive piece of software. This book helps you to squeeze every dollar out of your investment.

Among 100 hacks in the book, #64 about Reflector is my favorite. It sent me deep below the skin of .Net framework and get me an intimate look at .Net.

I would give this book a solid five stars if all the hacks download work as book said, but some(although very few) of hacks have bugs that need some help. For example, hack #97 Classify add-in, when I downloaded it from the book's site and installed it, I got a cryptic keybinding invalid warning. But it got fixed when I emailed the author about the problem. Thank you, James for your responsiveness.
Ying

I would say this book is must-have for any die-hard .Net coder. Visual Studio.Net is a powerful IDE, and it is an expensive piece of software. This book helps you to squeeze every dollar out of your investment.

Among 100 hacks in the book, #64 about Reflector is my favorite. It sent me deep below the skin of .Net framework and get me an intimate look at .Net.

I would give this book a solid five stars if all the hacks download work as book said, but some(although very few) of hacks have bugs that need some help. For example, hack #97 Classify add-in, when I downloaded it from the book's site and installed it, I got a cryptic keybinding invalid warning. But it got fixed when I emailed the author about the problem. Thank you, James for your responsiveness.
Ying

I've been using Visual Studio .NET for a couple of years now, and while I've always managed to get the things done that I needed, it was not always done in the most efficient way. However, it was not until I read this book that I realized that.

The book is well organized, divided into 13 logical chapters, each focusing on a particular area. My favorite was "Customizing Visual Studio" which shows you many ways to setup VS to work best for you and your particular needs. The book also has tons of screenshots and very clear instructions, which I have found that many computer books lack these days, especially some of the other O'Reilly books. In addition, there are lots of code samples, where applicable.

Another great thing that book included was info about a bunch of VS add-ins. There are literally hundreds of them out there, so it was nice to have someone else spend all the time sorting through them and letting the reader know which ones are worth their time.

Overall, it's a great book for anybody who uses Visual Studio .NET

I've been using Visual Studio .NET for a couple of years now, and while I've always managed to get the things done that I needed, it was not always done in the most efficient way. However, it was not until I read this book that I realized that.

The book is well organized, divided into 13 logical chapters, each focusing on a particular area. My favorite was "Customizing Visual Studio" which shows you many ways to setup VS to work best for you and your particular needs. The book also has tons of screenshots and very clear instructions, which I have found that many computer books lack these days, especially some of the other O'Reilly books. In addition, there are lots of code samples, where applicable.

Another great thing that book included was info about a bunch of VS add-ins. There are literally hundreds of them out there, so it was nice to have someone else spend all the time sorting through them and letting the reader know which ones are worth their time.

Overall, it's a great book for anybody who uses Visual Studio .NET

I'm looking a visual studio book which really explain what is going on with Visual Studio from how to use it to what is really happening behind the scenes. This books DOES NOT do this.

I'm looking a visual studio book which really explain what is going on with Visual Studio from how to use it to what is really happening behind the scenes. This books DOES NOT do this.

I spend a lot of time working with Visual Studio.Net using C# with windows applications, web applications, and libraries. I have found that not only tweaks that this book provides, but also tools suggested from this book have made my productivity much higher. These have been very worth the book and have promoted these ideas to team members. If you use visual studio and are part of a team, your members will find this book very worthwhile.

Very good book on Visual Studio. However readers should be aware that most of the content is geared towards .NET (i.e., Visual Basic .NET and Visual C#). There is little C++ content inside. If you read the blurbs on the back cover the author states that these are .NET hacks. So readers hoping to find a plethora of C++ related hacks should look elsewhere. But if it's .NET you're after this book is one of the best.

This book will save you up to 15% of your coding time.

Not a bad book, some of the 'hacks' were straightforward that every true developer is familiar with. Others were nice to know. The best 'hacks' however were downlods from various sites....

I got this book hoping to find advanced tweaks I could make to the Visual Studio IDE, but I'm disappointed. I was hoping to find ways of removing commands from context menus, and making the debugger more usefull and such, but most of these "hacks" are fairly basic. Anyone who has used the editor is probably already familiar with much of what is covered. Also, the author did not do a good job distinguishing hacks that are Visual Studio 2005 specific, so I can't even use some of the cooler techniques in the book.

This would be better off as a small webpage on basic Visual Studio Tips & Tricks than as a "hacks" book.

As a newcomer to VS.NET and one who tends to highly customize software tools to improve efficiency, I found this book provided a wealth of useful knowledge.

Most of the hacks are well written and provide a clear description of how to implement them. The hacks are well organized into chapters pertaining to the various aspects of the IDE such as navigation, editing, debugging, solutions/projects, tools, etc. This, in addition to most of the hacks being self-contained, makes it easy to just read up on specific areas of interest.

I read the book right through and, although not all the hacks were relevant (as expected in books of this nature), I found a surprising amount of the book was of interest and has helped increase my mastery of VS.NET. In particular the book provides useful links to external add-ins, some of which I now use in day-to-day work, for example VSTabs, VSFileFinder, GhostDoc, etc.

Since reading the book I've discovered some additional free hacks, including DPack (the "surround with" feature is useful if you're still stuck with VS.NET 2003), and some Emacs utils for sending files between Emacs and VS.NET and launching a VS.NET debugger session from within Emacs (can't yet upgrade to VS.NET 2005 to gain the benefit of the built-in Emacs key binding emulation!).

This book's terrific because it helps folks developing in Visual Studio learn how to make the best use of the tool. James's book applies to versions 2002, 2003, and 2005. My only nit with the book is that it's not always clear which version a hack applies to, but this criticism is tiny compared to the great benefit the book gives readers.

The book's loaded with tips to help you develop faster by getting the most out of the VS IDE. James shows tricks for customizing your environment, helps you to get the most out of VS's help system, and gives some fundamental tips on how to configure important project and solution settings.

There are a huge number of add-ons and third party tools to extend VS, but it's difficult for developers to know which tools make sense and which are stable enough and worthwhile enough to install. James's book sorts through all this with great recommendations for useful, stable addons.

A great book which will NOT be outdated when VS2005 is released later this year.

(Disclaimer: James is a friend and we're working on an open source project together. Regardless of my association with him, this really is a terrific book.)

Do you find yourself always picking the same options every time you create a project in Visual Studio? I have the sense that a lot of Visual Studio developers get comfortable with a certain ritual of options, never really getting the sense for all that Visual Studio has to offer. This book absolutely opened my mind in terms of what Visual Studio can do, and how it can be tweaked to work better the way you want it to.

Visual Studio contains so many features to make developers' lives easy. For example, did you know that Visual Studio supports build events? When a build is successfully compiled (or even if it's unsuccessful), VS can be programmed to perform certain tasks depending on the status of your build. What if you always work with a certain custom datatype. Wouldn't it be nice to have a custom visualizer created to easily examine the contents of the object while at a break point? In my opinion, this hack (#43) is one of the most useful ones in the book (for what I do, at least).

If you find yourself doing the same thing every day in Visual Studio, chances are you don't know what it's even capable of. This book goes a long way to show you exactly what it can do. By hacking Visual Studio, you can make it do exactly what you need.

I'm impressed with the spread of this book. It covers everything from picking an editor, generating code with macros, using UML, even stress testing your application. This is an impressive work and will be of great help to anyone who works day in and day out with Visual Studio.

If you want to master the core aspects of Visual Studio .NET then Visual Studio Hacks should be on your bookshelves.
There are lots of books available for learning C#, Visual Basic .NET, Visual C++ .NET and etc. But the number of books pertaining to Visual Studio .NET is comparatively less. Developers are looking for a tips and tricks book rather than a plain text book. It is at this point of time, O'reilly, a popular publisher of programming books released Visual Studio Hacks. With the help of this book, you can effectively learn the tips and tricks associated with Visual Studio .NET.

(...)

I highly recommend Visual Studio Hacks for anyone with less than 2 years experience using Visual Studio 2003. For those developers with more than 2 years experience, it may also be very valuable depending on the scope and depth of their experience. A few key points about why I really like this book:

The book is enjoyable reading, intellectually stimulating and provides information that is practically relevant. There is insight from a number of different contributors, not just the primary author. While reading the book, I got ideas for other Hacks that I'll be testing.

The book can be read by choosing individual Hacks of interest or by consuming them by chapter or cover to cover. I read the book cover to cover over the weekend, while testing a number of their tips at the same time.

A number of valuable tools and add-ins are discussed which will improve the developer experience.

There are very few if any books currently available that address and deliver what this book achieves. This book has something for the beginner and the experienced .Net developer. For example, another book on the market with a similar goal provides content that is only for the beginner.

For the most part, the book provides insight not found in Microsoft's documentation or other books. This is very important since most books on the market today simply rehash what's in the documentation or what is commonly found in other books.

My only small disappointment with the book is that a few of the Hacks should have been eliminated, since they really weren't Hacks and replaced with other less documented Hacks. Obviously, this is very subjective and more a reflection of a hunger for more cool Hacks.

Go to your local bookstore, browse this book, see what I mean and add it to your collection.

Avery demonstrates how Microsoft has refined Visual Studio into a very mature and integrated IDE. Though it must be said that this is best done with respect to Microsoft's languages of choice - C#, VB.NET and SQL Server. But if one of these is indeed your coding language, then the book offers a grab bag of tips.

The guts of this book are in one chapter - Debugging. Avery correctly points out that without debugging, Visual Studio is just a tarted up text editor clamped to a compiler. The 8 hacks in this chapter are thus pivotal in the book's potential utility to you. If you have ever used any debugger, then the chapter's concepts will be familiar. Like setting breakpoints at selected lines or functions. Or debugging a running process. Plus, Visual Studio has special means of debugging SQL Server. For some of you who have to maintain code for the latter, this ability can be Visual Studio's best feature.

Now if only Visual Studio were cheaper!

Visual Studio Hacks offers the reader 100 tips related to the Microsoft Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE). This book covers topics on versions of the software including Visual Studio 2005. Mr. Avery has selected a good compliment of topics. While not all of the hacks will be of interest to all developers, I think there is enough content in here for all levels of Visual Studio users. The typical items such as IDE setup, keyboard shortcuts, macros, and enhancing the tool are covered. However, this book also provides guidance on how to use and integrate the necessary tools to support a complete developer build cycle. Topics such as unit testing, debugging, profiling, code analysis, automating builds, and documenting source code are covered.

Visual Studio is one of the most productive development IDEs that I have worked with, in my experience. There are so many features that it takes a text like this to make you appreciate it. It is much more interesting to read a format such as this, instead of stepping through the product documentation, page by page, looking for nuggets of value.

I highly recommend this book. I believe that it is a must-have companion for Visual Studio. Anyone that is establishing their project's IDE guidelines for their development team would be well-served by the material covered in this book. What a way to impress your boss.

The O'Reilly 'Hacks' books are great.

After you are familiar with using Visual Studio, you will find that periodically reading the 'Hacks' books will give you ideas about nifty little things that you can do. There are an even hundred hacks that cover all areas from setting up projects to extending and enhancing Visual Studio.

At its core, Visual Studio is just an editor, but it is quite a powerful editor with numerous features to increase productivity. There is a chapter and ten hacks on the editor section alone. And there are two additional chapters on Navigating and Customizing the editor to make it do things easier, faster or simply more suited to the way you choose to work.

Finally there is a discussion on various types of third party add-ins that can be used to further extend the feature set. It is a great relief to have someone else test the add-in before you spend time finding out that it doesn't do what's advertised.

Anyone who uses Visual Studio without reading this book periodically is not working as efficiently as he could. O'Reilly does professional quality books for professional programmers, this one is true to their heritage.

This book is a MUST HAVE for your collection. Even the most advanced user will be amazed at the abundance of information to tune and 'turbocharge' the Visual Studio IDE. James Avery did an excellent job of choosing and organizing the content - very highly recommended.

This is a great resource for making the Visual Studio IDE even better than it already is. Highly recommended.

If you spend a fair amount of time writing code in Visual Studio.NET, then Visual Studio Hacks will definitely improve your productivity in writing, debugging, and maintaining code. You'll find everything from using (and the practical uses of) built-in features (such as the Clipboard ring) to in-depth explanations of downloadable add-ins.

One thing I love about the book is how easy the hacks are to implement. For example I've always been annoyed at the output from the build results window but never took the time to even think about changing it. It seemed to be just easier to deal with it than fix it. After reading Hack #35 (Modify the Build Output and Navigate the Results), I'm confident I can take a few minutes to write a macro and customize it as needed.

Worried about difficulty in writing a macro? Hack #51 explains it step-by-step.

Although I don't consider myself to be an Über-user of VS.NET, I do use the development environment quite a bit and know my way around fairly well. That said, Visual Studio Hacks has definitely augmented my knowledge of not only what VS.NET does, but what *good* 3rd party add-ins are available. I've had too many bad experiences with *bad* add-ins killing half-a-day of work after requiring a reinstall of VS.NET. The ones listed here work well and are documented well.

By the way, I have to say that I liked Hack #7 (Make Pasting into Visual Studio Easier) the most. But then again, it's pretty hard *not* like a hack that you contributed to the book ;-).