Select a file in solution explorer without previewing in Visual Studio 2012

One of the new features in VS2012 is the ability to 'preview' a file instead of opening it fully which will open it in the 'preview' pane (docked to the right). To do this Left click on the file in the solution explorer. The great thing about it is that you can only have one preview open at a time. So when you're searching for something looking through several files in the process, the ones that aren't needed will close themselves.

As cool as it is, it started to annoy me after a while as I click in the solution explorer to enable scrolling if I'm out of Visual Studio. If it happens to be a large file it can take a second or two to load. So I went looking for a solution and it didn't take long to find one. Alt + Left click in the solution explorer will not show a preview of the file.

Go to active document in Visual Studio 2012 solution explorer

Finally! Visual Studio natively supports jumping to the active document in the solution explorer with Visual Studio 2012. The command is called "Sync with Active Document" and can be accessed from the Solution Explorer toolbar.

The default shortcut is Ctrl + [, S and can be customised by modifying the SolutionExplorer.SyncWithActiveDocument command in keyboard options (Tools -> Customise -> Keyboard)

Use Ctrl+Shift to run as administrator

Handy little tip for developers using Windows 8. You can run an app as administrator by holding Ctrl+Shift and clicking an app tile.

This shortcut is derived from Ctrl+Shift+Enter to run the selected application as administrator which has been present since Windows 7, possibly Vista too. This still works on the start screen of course, when using search or navigating using the arrow keys.

Windows 8 hidden shortcut to system-ey things

You can access a menu in Windows 8 that gives you access to all sorts of system-related things by bringing the cursor to the start menu hotspot (bottom-left corner of the screen) and right-clicking.

It looks like you can get to it pretty much any time except for while in a full-screen desktop app (like games) which seem to have quite a few problems for people not familiar with hotkeys.

Organising the app groups on your start screen

Being a someone that is a little OCD about organisation, I was a little disappointed when I couldn't immediately figure out how to name the Windows 8 app groups on my new start screen. You can do it, it just may not be immediately obvious for everyone. Here are the steps:

1. You need to zoom out first, you can do this using the standard zoom out shortcut (ctrl+mouse wheel down) or by clicking on the little dash button in the bottom-right corner of the screen.
   
   
   
2. Right-click on the group you wish to name and hit the 'Name group' button in the context menu along the bottom of the screen
   
   
   

While in this zoomed out state you can also organise the groups by dragging and dropping

Type ? to view hotkeys in Google services

A handy little trick that's global to most of Google's core services. Press Shift + / (?) or Ctrl + / to display an overlay containing the hotkeys for the application. To hide it you can repeat the hotkey, press Esc or click off the overlay.

Having an easy to learn shortcut that's common across services is a really nice feature for the power user who wants to learn all of the hotkeys.

Here is the overlay for Drive.

Removing an annoying entry from autocomplete

How often does this happen to you?

You start typing one of your commonly used web sites only to have your browser autocomplete to something a URL you don't want. It gets frustrating when you have to select the correct item over and over again.

There a little trick you can use in Chrome and Firefox to get around this annoyance:

• Start typing the URL
• Select the unwanted autocomplete entry
• Hit shift + delete to remove the entry from autocomplete

It shouldn't bother you again.