CodeRush for Visual Studio .NET

Today, software consumers demand more than ever before from developers. The pressure to deliver more features with higher quality in less time has never been greater. Developer Express created CodeRush for Visual Studio® .NET to help developers and managers meet these increased demands for quality and functionality, by boosting productivity while eliminating the repetition that erodes precious creativity.

For Developers, CodeRush for Visual Studio® .NET will help you create sophisticated code blocks in seconds and extend code templates instantly. CodeRush will complete identifiers as you type and expand or contract selections logically. With CodeRush, you will be able to instantly place selected code inside Try/Catch blocks, Regions and your own custom wrappers with ease. You can even reverse the logic of selected code and revisit important points within your code instantly (and effortlessly swap between locations).

Visualization Tools

Quickly see the essence of the code you're working on because Clarity is good - Noise is bad. CodeRush adds subtle visual cues to code to allow a developer to identify and recognise code quickly. Region Painting CodeRush adds cool custom region painting to Visual Studio, reducing the visual noise associated with #region and #endregion directives when the region is expanded. This gives you the flexibility to enclose each method and property inside a named region, as shown in the screen shot below: Flow Break Evaluation Flow evaluation reveals the path of execution when a flow break keyword is encountered. For example, in C#, flow break keywords include "continue", "break", "throw", and "return" (in VB, "Raise", "Return", "Exit Sub", "Exit Do", etc.). Flow evaluation is an important tool when viewing complex code with multiple loops and breaks. CodeRush also visually alerts you to the presence of these keywords with an onscreen icon (click the icon to jump to the target location, or hover the mouse over the icon for a visual preview). Visibility Icons Visibility indicators appear to the left of class and struct members, revealing access. Visibility icons are shown below: Protected Internal Internal Protected Private If a member is public, the icon for that member appears. A subset of member icons appear below: Field Method Property Class Struct Interface You can click the visibility indicator icon to present a drop-down menu of valid access modifiers for this member. Quick Nav Preview Quick Nav is the navigation feature that lets you find identifiers fast. Simply hit Ctrl-. and Quick Nav will lists the types and members available inside all open files. Once you have a quick Nav window up, seeing the code simply requires that you press the Ctrl key and the code associated with that item is immediately highlit. See the CodeRush Navigation page for more info on Quick Nav. Structural Highlighting Structural Highlighting shows how your code lines up.

 

Markers

Markers are like breadcrumb trails for finding your way back to important points in your code. Markers offer a number of improvements over the basic bookmarks included with Visual Studio.

So while Visual Studio bookmarks are certainly useful, CodeRush markers may be a better alternative. Currently, markers are only available in CodeRush.

Feature	Markers	Visual Studio Bookmarks
Visually marks a line for later visitation	Yes	Yes. VS bookmarks are drawn in the widget column, and are prone to being obscured by breakpoints and other widgets.
Remembers column position	Yes	No, the caret (editor insertion point) is always positioned at column 1.
Remembers view position	Yes	No, bookmark is always centered vertically.
Stack-based, allowing tracing of steps	Yes	No, bookmarks are navigated in line number order
Move quickly between two locations	Yes	Only if the two locations are both in the active file (and there are only two bookmarks in that file).

 

Swapping Markers

You can even use markers to work in two places at once (alternating between two important locations with a single keystroke), and you can also use them as visual reminders to unfinished code.

Quick Nav.

Quick Nav in CodeRush efficiently gets you where you need to be.

Quick Nav. is the member navigation feature of CodeRush that lets you jump straight to member declarations, with the advantage of live filtering (based on text you specify and other selectable criteria).

That's not all, Quick Nav. also includes an advanced code preview feature, so you can examine possible targets before you commit to a jump.

Finally Quick Nav drops a marker at the point in your code that you jumped "from" so you can quickly return when you're finished at the target location.