Visual Studio 2008 is a huge resources consumer, it takes long to load then long to open your solution, long to run it and debug it. I have been using it for more than a year now after setting VS 2005 to retirement. I have VS 2008 set on a high perforamce Vista Business laptop with 2GB of memory.
While working with ASP.NET on VS 2008 my colleagues and myself started to notice some patterns when running or debugging a web project that will improve performance rapidally. Tricks that do really work and we laugh every time they work at how silly they are.
Here are two interesting tips that we encountered:
1 – The Magical VS 2008/ASP.NET Mouse Moving
When debugging a running ASP.NET application, sometimes, it takes long to step from one code line to the other, usually I run out of patience and I snap my fingers asking Studio to leg it, but obviously that doesn’t work. I started changing my pattern into keep moving the mouse right and left and I have noticed that it takes no time to move from one line to another, tried it again and again and it kept working every time. I even asked my collegues to try it and it worked for them. So, now when I debug I usually click F10 with one hand and move the mouse right and left with the other.
Trick: While debugging ASP.NET with VS 2008 moving the mouse continuously will make debugging faster.
2 – The Miraculous VS 2008/ASP.NET Task Bar Click
When hitting F5 or clicking “Run” to run and debug an ASP.NET Website or Web Application, the project used to compile then takes more than a minute, sometimes, to load the browser while I sit patiently looking arround waiting for it to load.
My colleague, which happens to have similar laptop specs, was less patient, she used to click randomly on the screen waiting the project browser to run. Suddenly, she clicked the task bar and the browser run at once! Is it a coincidence? She tried it again and again and it worked! Then I tried it and it worked for me, even if I waited for some time before clicking it.
Trick: Clicking on the task bar after the project completes compilation and preparing to launch the browser in debug mode will reduce the browser’s launch time.
Do you think that Microsoft knows about this? Is there a logical explanation for this? No, but it works so enjoy it while you can. If it works for you then please drop me a line of comment to let me know. And if you happen to know similar tricks, then please hit me with it.