VS 2008 - Detachable code tabs

Question

Admittedly this might not be a problem on larger screens, but my employer is abit tight and refuses to buy monitors larger than 19inch, this means that I dont have much screen real estate to view all the Visual Studio windows and my code at the same time, or two pieces of code at once. Is there anything that allows me to detach the code panels so that I can view two different classes at once on each of my screens?

Answer 1

You can right click on the tab strip and insert a new vertical (or horizontal) tab group.

This allows you to view multiple tabs at the same time.

Answer 2

@Vaibhav :) I know about this, but this still restricts you to one window. I want detachable tabs so that I can view the whole file, not just a boxy window.

Answer 3

Hmm.. I don't think there is a way from within Visual Studio. For maximizing real estate and working on simultaneous files, I use that method plus viewing the files on Full Screen mode.

Do you multiple monitors?

Answer 4

You could stretch visual studio across both monitors then put two code windows next to each other.

Basically, you are manually maximizing VS across both screens.

Keith

Answer 5

Tools>Options>General>Multiple Documents

Answer 6

If you don't need to compile one of the code screens, have you thought about just opening Notepad++ or PSPad in your other monitor and viewing the second batch of code that way? They have context sensitive coloring that would assist in reading. I do this all the time.

Answer 7

Thanks for the cool (albeit hackish) tip - a vertical tab group and stretching Visual Studio over two monitors is better than nothing. Thanks StackOverflow!

Answer 8

Visual Studio 2010 will support detachable code-panels from the main window but is not supported in Visual Studio 2008 and earlier.

Another option would be to open the same solution in a second instance of Visual Studio. When changes are made to a file, Visual studio will prompt you to reload the file (not ideal but might be better than manually resizing windows)