- No substring completion (e.g., like emacs's ido-mode), no fuzzy completion (e.g., like various JS-based editors), no acronym completion (e.g., like emacs)
- Navigation bar searches are shit. You have to select namespace, then class, then symbol, and there seems to be no keyboard shortcut for any of this stuff. It should present a list of entities in the file, display fully-qualified name of each, and let one search that list using the search mechanisms
- Class view searches aren't great. They solve many of the above two problems (the full list of entity names is searched, and it finds by substring), but the results don't update in real time
- Very hard to find files. Say you have a massive project with loads of solution folders and you need to find that file that's got the name "ProductScreen" in it - well, good luck! There's something I've seen some people do with the toolbar-based Find in Files widget, but that only searches by prefix, which is useless, because so many projects have a mandatory prefix on their file names
When I was a regular Visual Studio user - less Windows work of late means I've mostly been using emacs - I used to use Visual Assist (http://www.wholetomato.com/), an addin that improves the above functionality a bit. Visual Assist's code completion is a bit intrusive, but it does the acronym completion thing; for navigation, its navigation bar replacement lets you search fully-qualified names by substrings, its class view-style functionality updates the symbol list (searched by substring) in real time, and you have something similar for finding files as well.
All of this stuff is great for finding your way quickly around an unfamiliar project - i.e., any project with more than 15 programmers, even after you've been working on it for 2 years. And even when you know exactly what you want, at least you don't have to keep typing in that stupid project-specific prefix everywhere.
(I'm happy for the Visual Assist people that MS hasn't just copied their functionality exactly and totally put them out of business in one go, but it does make me a bit mistrustful of the Visual Studio UI team's judgement.)
This was the point I was making below, but it seems like all of the features I look for are already in Visual Studio.
I'm not sure if I'm understanding all of your items exactly, but I just tried to do everything on your list. It seemed like each (except for acronym completion) was available right out of the box (I am using VS2013).
For example, both the class view search and find files are handled by searching solution explorer. It updates in real time and the keyboard shortcut is Ctrl + ;
It does all the searching you want for filenames and symbols, substring searches, matching, you name it. It's fantastic, and they should highlight it way, way more.
As for your file finding problem, I don't know why you didn't start typing in the search field on top of the solution explorer. It filters everything in the solution explorer, and also does substring matching.
All but the first bullet point deal with something other than autocomplete, and (as another user mentioned) CTRL+, takes care of many of your other points.
Hi to3m, Thanks for your suggestions! We have forwarded them to our Visual Studio team. FYI, your suggestions are always welcome at visual studio.uservoice.com
- No substring completion (e.g., like emacs's ido-mode), no fuzzy completion (e.g., like various JS-based editors), no acronym completion (e.g., like emacs)
- Navigation bar searches are shit. You have to select namespace, then class, then symbol, and there seems to be no keyboard shortcut for any of this stuff. It should present a list of entities in the file, display fully-qualified name of each, and let one search that list using the search mechanisms
- Class view searches aren't great. They solve many of the above two problems (the full list of entity names is searched, and it finds by substring), but the results don't update in real time
- Very hard to find files. Say you have a massive project with loads of solution folders and you need to find that file that's got the name "ProductScreen" in it - well, good luck! There's something I've seen some people do with the toolbar-based Find in Files widget, but that only searches by prefix, which is useless, because so many projects have a mandatory prefix on their file names
When I was a regular Visual Studio user - less Windows work of late means I've mostly been using emacs - I used to use Visual Assist (http://www.wholetomato.com/), an addin that improves the above functionality a bit. Visual Assist's code completion is a bit intrusive, but it does the acronym completion thing; for navigation, its navigation bar replacement lets you search fully-qualified names by substrings, its class view-style functionality updates the symbol list (searched by substring) in real time, and you have something similar for finding files as well.
All of this stuff is great for finding your way quickly around an unfamiliar project - i.e., any project with more than 15 programmers, even after you've been working on it for 2 years. And even when you know exactly what you want, at least you don't have to keep typing in that stupid project-specific prefix everywhere.
(I'm happy for the Visual Assist people that MS hasn't just copied their functionality exactly and totally put them out of business in one go, but it does make me a bit mistrustful of the Visual Studio UI team's judgement.)