CODEWITHSUNDEEP
visual-studio-2010mousehighlighting
JustBeingHelpful
JustBeingHelpful

Reputation: 18980

How can I increase width of Selection Margin or prevent block highlighting in Visual Studio 2010 text editor?

When I moved from Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2010, there seems to only be a small section of pointing space (for the mouse) to click and drag and click again, to grab a few lines of code. This is about 8 pixels wide and is referred to as the Selection Margin. I often used this area in Visual Studio 2008 to select/copy/paste code. Now I have to rely on using the keyboard, which is not difficult, but if I'm using the mouse, Visual Studio is not very intuitive or usable. Is there a way to prevent the highlighting of lexical groups (where the expand/collapse or plus/minus sections are) so I can just select the lines of code instead? They seem to call this block highlighting. Most of the surface area to the left of the text in Visual Studio 2010 seems to be dedicated to the block highlighting. The text editor freezes when a lexical block of code is highlighted and I cannot use the right context menu. The right context menu is also only available from inside the text editor now, so I have to select my lines in that 8 pixel region, then move my mouse over to the right to copy. My productivity in Visual Studio 2010 has decreased substantially because of this change.

I'm wondering if anyone has written any extensions with the Visual Studio 2010 editor to fix these issues?
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/macros/WriteExtensions.aspx

Upvotes: 1

Views: 474

Answers (2)

JustBeingHelpful
JustBeingHelpful

Reputation: 18980

Options > Text Editor > All Languages > Show line numbers. This allows you to have more space to select and copy the lines, but you still must go over to the right (where the code is) to copy.

Upvotes: 1

Evgenia
Evgenia

Reputation: 268

Have you tried to select in a so called 'Continuous Stream Mode' which is supported by VS 2010 by default? Here's what I mean -> Hold down the SHIFT key and click in the Selection Margin(located at the far left of the Editor window, to select a whole line.) to extend your selection line by line.

Regards, Evgenia

Upvotes: 0

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