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What is Visual Studio Window Manager? VSWindowManager is an addin for Visual Studio 2003 and Visual Studio 2005 to help you manage your window layouts. It allows you to save your window positions, sizes, and auto-hide status; and to change between layouts either manually or automatically. For example the following are all windows: Solution Explorer Class View Properties Error List Output Toolbox And so on... This addin utilizes existing functionality in Visual Studio to save and restore named layouts. All the addin does is provide an interface for triggering a save/apply from Visual Studio. The actual layout information is maintained by Visual Studio itself. If you ever wish to move your layouts from one machine to another you can do so with the new Visual Studio 2005 functionality under the 'Tools->Import and Export Settings' menu. Saving Layouts Once VSWindowManager is installed it will add two new menu options under the Window menu in Visual Studio. To save the current layout of your Visual Studio Windows go to the 'Window->Save Window Layout As' menu and then select the name of the layout you wish to overwrite. Applying Layouts There are multiple ways to apply a layout: Manually from the Window menu Select the name of the layout you wish to apply from the 'Window->Apply Window Layout' menu Manually from the toolbar When VSWindowManager is installed for the first time it will add a new toolbar. On this toolbar will be an icon for each individual layout. Clicking on any icon will cause that layout to be applied Manually using a keyboard shortcut You can assign a keyboard shortcut to any layout by selecting 'Customize' from the 'Tools' menu Then click on the 'Keyboard' button Filter the command list by 'WindowManager' Select the layout from the command list and assign a keyboard shortcut Automatically To enable automatic changing of layouts you need to check the 'Auto Apply Layouts' option under the 'Window->Apply Window Layout' menu. If auto-apply layouts is on then the addin will automatically apply either the Design or Coding layout based on the currently selected document. Customizing Settings All the settings for the addin (including the names, icons, and associated file extensions for each layout) are stored in an xml file in your documents and settings under 'Application Data\Power Toys for Visual Studio .NET 2005\VSWindowManager' in the 'layout.xml' file. The comments in the xml file should hopefully be enough to guide you when making changes. Note if you change the xml file such that it can no longer be read by the addin it will automatically be overwritten with the default settings. Historic The Window Manager addin began as a GotDotNet project for Visual Studio 2003. The most recent releases and source code have been brought across however you can find previous bugs and forum posts at the old site: http://www.gotdotnet.com/workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=7ca49cdf-3b34-4da7-b783-3679cd4cdec5
Last edited Sep 18 2006 at 4:40 AM by Antin, version 3
Comments nprather wrote Oct 13 2006 at 7:12 PM This is not working for me in VS 2005. I set up the windows layed out the way I want, click save layout. Later I try to apply the layout and nothing happends. For example: i have Solution Explorer, Server Explorer, and Properties all docked on the right side of the screen. But it's not sticking. PeterNL wrote Nov 26 2006 at 12:15 PM No effect at all. Working with VS2005. The menu is added to the toolbar, but doesn't do anyhting except causing VS2005 to report an error and close down. An less robust add-in for VS2005 then expected. What a pity! jroos wrote Aug 24 2007 at 8:16 PM Exact same behavior as nprather above. appears to save but does screen just flickers a little when i try to choose a layout. jroos wrote Aug 24 2007 at 8:27 PM I take it back, After some fiddling around I realized I misunderstood what this addin does. It DOES work in my VS 2005 environment, however it only hides or shows certain windows. It does not appear to keep track of WHERE those windows are. I wanted to use this as a way to toggle between putting the code explorer, tasks, error list etc in a separate window on my 2nd monitor and putting those same windows docked to the right hand side on a single monitor. Also I don't know if this is a bug, but when I hide some windows and click the layout button again it saves my changes, (I dont have to actaully click window\|save layout) Hope that helps some of us who didn't think this was working at all on the first try. marko99 wrote Sep 4 2007 at 12:56 PM I'm seeing the same sort of symptoms as others. Using VS2005 with SP1 and Team Studio. I save my configuration, close some floating windows and restore. Nothing happens. I re-open the output window, move it and restore. Nothing happens. I dock it and restore. Nothing happens. I switch it to auto-hide and restore. Nothing Happens. I change it from dockable to tabbed document, restore. Nothing happens. I switch off auto-apply and retry all of the above. Nothing happens.I switch off auto-apply and retry a couple of the above. Nothing happens. Really wanted this to work as I switched to VS a year ago and still miss Eclipse perspectives on an almost daily basis. marko99 wrote Sep 4 2007 at 1:09 PM Played further. I think I must have a hit a minor bug before. I've now saved to a different layout and I can now us it to close my output window. Then re-opened the windows saved to my original layout and I can use it to open my output window. Unfortunately, without remembering the position or layout type of the windows I don't really find it useful. From the introductory paragraph it sounds like this may have worked in 2003. Hope it gets fixed. marlongrech wrote Dec 19 2007 at 12:54 PM Are there any plans to support VS2008 RW314159 wrote Apr 7 at 6:44 PM I modified the source code and was able to get it to work in 2008. mattlant wrote Sep 23 at 7:22 PM Did you post the code anywhere for a vs2008 copy? Sign in to add a comment

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VS2005 version 1.1.1 Production

Tue Sep 26 2006 at 7:00 AM

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