Chapter 5. Browsers and Explorers

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Solution Explorer

• Class View

• Server Explorer

• Object Browser

• Performance Explorer

• Macro Explorer

• Document Outline

Visual Studio provides a cohesive and all-encompassing view of your solutions and projects by exposing them to you via browsers and explorers. These windows (which are confusingly also referred to as view windows) attempt to provide a visually structured representation of a large variety of elementssome code based, others not.

In general, you access and display these windows through the View menu. Some of these windows, such as the Solution Explorer and Class View, are staples of a developer's daily routine. Others touch on elements that are used during specific points within the development cycle or by more advanced Visual Studio IDE users.

In this chapter, we will examine each of the browser/explorer windows in detail.

Note

As with many Visual Studio features, the actual browser and explorer tools available to you vary according to the Visual Studio version.