When working in big projects one of my favorite ways to get around is to right-click on a variable, class name, or method call in code and select Go To Definition from the context menu.
This quickly opens the file where the object you clicked on is defined and navigates to its definition. Very handy when trying to sort through and figure out code you didn’t write. If you’re like me, you often find yourself wandering into the depths of someone else’s code and eventually you’re going to want to back out and get back to where you started. In Visual Studio there are two navigation buttons on the Standard toolbar menu which allow you to move forward and backwards through your navigation history.
If you select the dropdown menu on the Backward button you can also view and navigate to code you visited in your navigation history. It is organized by filename so you can easily locate the code you want.
You can also use the keyboard shortcuts to navigate forward and backward more quickly:
The shortcuts aren’t as intuitive as I like, so I changed them. You change the keyboard shortcuts bound to the navigation commands as well in Tools | Options | Environment | Keyboard.
Enjoy!
