Every time I view a form or dialog in Visual Studio (2005) the Properties and Toolbox panes show up on the right side of my screen. That's good to have because they are useful for manipulating dialogs.
However once I switch back to source code these panes just get in the way... is there a way to get them to go away automatically?
If you click the 'pin' icon on those tool windows, you can toggle whether the windows stay open all the time, or only when the mouse is near them. Of course, sometimes my mouse strays over in that direction and they pop out when I don't want them to, but such is life...
Rather than give up the space on the right side of the screen, I dragged my properties and toolbox panes over to the left-side frame that hosts the solution explorer and class view, etc. I'd rather have one multi-purpose box on one side of the screen than to have the code surrounded. If you need them both, you can put the toolbox in the solution explorer pane, then stack the properties pane beneath the solution explorer, which keeps a few properties in view at all times along with the toolbox.
I know it's not quite the answer you were looking for, but it's a different way of keeping that screen real estate available for code without messing with auto-hide (I find auto-hide to be really an annoyance more than a help.)