Simplify your Visual Studio 2010 Toolbar and Free Your Mind

You aren't using those toolbar buttons. Certainly not all of them. In fact, ScottGu once bet a group that they couldn't name every button from  left to right.

In some cases toolbars get added, then added and forgotten about. But they are there, up there in toolbar-space and they are taking up not only pixels, but also mental space.

Go ahead and take two minutes. Free your mind and clean house.

Go setup your virtual development workspace and make it fresh and personal.

• Close all your toolbars (or at least try and make a good effort)
• Close as many pinned Toolboxes as you can
• Get a fresh font and color theme for Visual Studio from http://studiostyl.es
• Change your colors and even make make the Visual Studio 2010 IDE colors look like Visual Studio 2008 if you want. Personalize.
• Get a nice Visual Studio Wallpaper (or three) from this collection of dozen of VS 2010 Wallpapers submitted by the community.

Doesn't that feel better?

Here's my Visual Studio after cleaning house. It feels faster (it's not) and it looks cleaner and it imposes less psychic weight on me.

Right click on your Toolbar and remove the ones you don't use. Even better, while you're in customize mode, grab just those commands that you use (maybe ones that aren't on your toolbar even though you use them) and get rid of ANYTHING you don't use every day.

Now, all those docked/pinned Tool Windows? Close the ones you don't use every day. Ah, to use a Rob Conery-ism, it's like rolling up the window in you car while driving on the freeway.

Next, head over my friends at http://studiostyl.es and get a nice Visual Studio Color Scheme and then a new Wallpaper from http://vs2010wallpapers.com. Or, get creative and submit your own creation to both sites!

Enjoy and be happy.

Related Links

• Visual Studio Programmer Themes Gallery and http://studiostyl.es/
• The Best Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Power Tools, Power Commands and Extensions
• Make the Visual Studio 2010 IDE colors look like Visual Studio 2008 with the Visual Studio Color Editor
• http://vs2010wallpapers.com for some lovely Community-Built Visual Studio wallpapers