Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - Reflectoring with the Keyboard

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Reflectoring with the Keyboard

Posted in Musings | Tools.

It's nice to "discover" a feature that you knew was already there but had forgotten. Reflector's "Analyzer" feature is a way to walk a Depends On/Used By tree.

I can fairly say that I never use the Visual Studio Object Browser but I live in Reflector. I've tried integrating it with Visual Studio, but this is one application that I like using Full Screen. I don't want it buried in a "toolbox window".

One of the things I love the most about reflector is that it is completely (and intuitively) usable via the keyboard. You just need to know:

Arrow Keys - Up, Down, Left, Right move you around the tree.
Tab - Switches you between panes.
F3 - Search. Lots of folks don't know that you can search on method name via the "Member Search" feature.
Space - The magic button that pops you into code view.
Ctrl-R - Starts the analyzer in a tree view in the right-hand page. At that point, the arrows, tabs, and space let you continue hunting.

Posted at 2006-02-23 09:01 AM by Scott
Comments [7]
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"Interesting Finds" (Jason Haley) [Trackback]

Thursday, February 23, 2006 9:13:21 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

great tip
Thank you

Dror Engel

Thursday, February 23, 2006 9:16:38 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Nice. I too live in Reflector (if only you could embed Visual Studio into Reflector eh?) and didn't realize there was a search. Silly rabbit.

Bil Simser

Thursday, February 23, 2006 11:22:13 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

It's funny -- I do use the object browser in VS and I use Reflector, but I hadn't thought about using Reflector for the things where I use the object browser today.

Right now, I mostly use Reflector to diagnose problems in generated assemblies, especially those with embedded resources.

I'm going to try using it as an object browser replacement and see how it goes.

Thanks for the idea.

Tommy Williams

Thursday, February 23, 2006 11:39:13 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

One addition I would make:

Ctrl-T - Navigates from one class to the selected Base/Derived class.

Great for checking out all class members.

Bill Pierce

Thursday, February 23, 2006 12:28:24 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Don't forget about alt-left arrow and alt-right arrow - the keyboard equivalents for "Back" and "Forward". I use those constantly.

Ctrl-T is a good one that I had never noticed. I also just noticed Ctrl-I (for Show Inherited Members). Sadly it's not a toggle.