Help with Visual Studio 2008 annoyances

Question

I really like VS2008 but I was wondering if someone has workarounds for these annoyances:

• When I open a /* ... */ comment block, VS insists on placing a '*' character on every new line. That's nice, but sometimes I don't want that at all. Is there a way to turn it off? The formatting section in the Options dialog for the C# editor doesn't seem to offer that as an adjustable option. I've also tried doing Shift+Enter and whatnot without success.
• VS2003 used to display the active filename and the project (if any) it belonged to in the main window title. E.g., "ProjectFoo - AssemblyInfo.cs - Microsoft Visual Studio" or something. That seems to be gone with no way to turn it on. I used to rely on the project part to navigate the solution explorer quickly, but now I find myself sitting there thinking which project the file I'm looking for belongs to. When you have 30 projects in a solution this tends to get old. And the auto sync thing is not an option here because I noticed it's slower in 2008 than it was in 2003 to begin with.
• VS2003 used to be lightning fast at compiling a project where a single file had changed and all its dependencies. It seems that VS2008 takes a hell of a lot longer to do the same thing. Why? I've looked at the options and all I can find is the "only compile enough to run when debugging" but that doesn't seem to make any difference in the speed of the builds. Is this a "feature" of MSBuild or something?
• Is there a way to turn off that glitzy selector that appears when I hit Ctrl+Tab and just have the thing switch to the next file?
• Why does VS2008 place tabs of newly-opened files at the beginning of the tab selector rather than at the end? I know this is an option in some editors and some people prefer it, but I want the last file I opened to be at the end of the tab selector. This doesn't seem to be an option, either.
• There is a really annoying lag I've noticed when I debug. As I step through code VS seems to be setting each opened file to read only and back. I mean I can see little blue lock icons appear and disappear in the tab selectors next to the file titles. I really need to just step through my code without having to see the whole window frame flash and flicker with every F10. Is there a way to fix this?

Answer 1

That's too many questions for me to answer so I'll just take one and let others chime in with the rest.

When I open a /* ... */ comment block, VS insists on placing a * character on every new line. That's nice, but sometimes I don't want that at all. Is there a way to turn it off?

The answer is found in this duplicate:

Tools > Options... > Text Editor > C# > Advanced > Uncheck "Generate XML Documentation comments for ///".

(Of course, in addition to getting rid of the automatic * in block comments, this will disable the autoformatting when you type "///", as it says.)

Answer 2

Let me take another question:

VS2003 used to be lightning fast at compiling a project where a single file had changed and all its dependencies. It seems that VS2008 takes a hell of a lot longer to do the same thing. Why? I've looked at the options and all I can find is the "only compile enough to run when debugging" but that doesn't seem to make any difference in the speed of the builds. Is this a "feature" of MSBuild or something?

This can be achieved by setting VS to only build the startup project and its dependencies as described here:

To build only the startup project and its dependencies

1. On the Tools menu, choose Options.

2. In the Options dialog box, expand the Projects and Solutions folder, and choose Build and Run.> The Build and Run, Projects and Solutions, Options Dialog Box opens.

3. Select the option to Only build startup projects and dependencies on Run.

   When this option is selected, only the current startup project and its dependencies are built when you:

   • choose Start (F5) from the Debug menu.

     -or-

   • choose Build Solution (CTRL+SHIFT+B) from the Build menu.

   When this option is cleared, either of the preceding command builds all projects, their dependencies, and the solution files. By default, this option is not selected.