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James Kovacs


Becoming a Jedi - Part 1 of N

...a ReSharper Jedi, that is. I am making no claims about my own ReSharper Jedi abilities. JP and Oren are known ReSharper Jedi Masters. I feel more like Luke Skywalker when he first landed on Dagobah in comparison. Back to the point of this post...

Many developers don't see the value of JetBrains' ReSharper until they've seen it in action. So I'm putting together this screencast series to show off my favourite ReSharper features. My goal is to keep each screencast to 5 to 10 minutes and focus on a related set of capabilities. In the first episode, I look at ReSharper's Code Browsing - CTRL-N, CTRL-B, CTRL-ALT-B, ALT-F7, and related.

Streaming: Becoming a Jedi - Part 1: Code Browsing (requires Silverlight 1.0 or higher)*

Download: Becoming a Jedi - Part 1: Code Browsing (via Live SkyDrive)

Before someone makes a snarky comment about my coding speed, I'm intentionally taking the time to explain the features. That and I'm not as adept as some at coding and talking at the same time. Hopefully I'll improve with practice as this screencast series progresses. Any constructive feedback on the content or presentation style is appreciated. Enjoy!

* I am encoding the series using Silverlight 1.0 for two reasons:

  1. In my tests with Camtasia, the Silverlight version scaled better than the Flash version. Text in Visual Studio remained clearer as the video was resized. The original recording is at 1024x768, but is still legible when scaled to 640x480 or smaller.
  2. I can host the content on Silverlight Streaming for free. When you sign up for an account, you get 10 GB of storage and 5 TB of bandwidth per month. The videos are distributed by Microsoft's content delivery network and streamed from a server close to the viewer. As an author you simply upload your videos to Silverlight Streaming and Microsoft does the rest. I also don't run the risk of blowing the bandwidth allotment at my hosting provider and incurring charges for bandwidth overages.

Published May 07 2008, 04:07 AM by james.kovacs
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Comments

DotNetKicks.com said:

You've been kicked (a good thing) - Trackback from DotNetKicks.com

# May 7, 2008 7:07 AM

Colin Jack said:

Good stuff, I haven't read it all but I believe this is also good:

blog.excastle.com/.../blog-event-the-31-days-of-resharper

Anyway enjoyed the screencast but unfortuantely I used different keyboard mappings so I had to swap... I must admit most of the time I just use CTRL+SHIFT+R and CTRL+SHIFT+G and search for the item I want in the menu so I'm far from a Resharper Jedi

# May 7, 2008 7:25 AM

Dew Drop - May 7, 2008 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew said:

Pingback from  Dew Drop - May 7, 2008 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew

# May 7, 2008 8:30 AM

Brendan Tompkins said:

Great!  Thanks James!  Here's the Resharper 3.0 keyboard scheme cheat sheet...

www.jetbrains.com/.../ReSharper30DefaultKeymap_2.pdf

# May 7, 2008 9:22 AM

Mike said:

Thanks. Please do more of these :)

Thanks.

# May 7, 2008 9:56 AM

Joey said:

.. yes my settings are different as well ...

Can you post what your ReSharper Options are set at if they are not default?  I consider default the Visual Studio keyboard shortcuts.

Plus I believe taking away the default settings of visual studio (ie. CTRL+N --> New File) is a huge detractor IMO.  Apply this to the web world when someone hits CTRL+TAB is generally accepted for new tabs or new browser window.   It's just convention and a new person using ReSharper may be in surprise if you take away their "common" shortcuts that apply to many apps.

# May 7, 2008 11:14 AM

Casey said:

I rarely use VS shortcuts, File/New is redundant, I never use that .... type the class name, Ctrl+Enter and R# creates the class, move over the class name, Ctrl + Enter Enter and it is moved to a correctly named file ...

# May 7, 2008 1:08 PM

Bryan Reynolds said:

Thanks!

May the force be with you!

# May 7, 2008 1:14 PM

Mike Suarez said:

thanks a lot ... keep'em comming please :)

# May 7, 2008 5:18 PM

Stevi Deter said:

It might be worthwhile doing a poll on preferences for using Resharper 2.0/IDEA or VS mapping. I started with IDEA, but have switched over to the VS mapping.

I know, I know, yet another holy war.

At least point out in the demo "I'm using the IDEA default settings..."

# May 7, 2008 7:37 PM

Stevi Deter said:

It might be worthwhile doing a poll on preferences for using Resharper 2.0/IDEA or VS mapping. I started with IDEA, but have switched over to the VS mapping.

I know, I know, yet another holy war.

At least point out in the demo "I'm using the IDEA default settings..."

# May 7, 2008 7:41 PM

Add-in for Visual studio(Resharper) « Rams On It - .NET said:

Pingback from  Add-in for Visual studio(Resharper) « Rams On It - .NET

# May 7, 2008 8:28 PM

Tony said:

James,

I enjoyed the screencast and am looking forward to the next one.  

A couple points I'd like to make:

1. There were a number of times where Keyboard Jedi was showing different key strokes than what you mentioned verbally.  Example: at time 2:11 you said Alt+F7 yet the display showed Ctrl+Alt+Shift+...  Don't know if it's a bug in Keyboard Jedi or if you actually pressed those keys.

2. Can you expand the size of the window for Keyboard Jedi?  For those times when you must press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+something, there isn't enough room to display with that font.

Thanks, and keep 'em coming.

# May 8, 2008 7:09 PM

james.kovacs said:

@Joey - Yes, I'm using the ReSharper 2.X/IDEA keyboard layout. I meant to mention it during the screencast. I started using ReSharper in the 2.0 days when that was the only layout and the key combos are committed to muscle memory now. Overriding VS defaults isn't a big deal for me as I never used them anyway, but I can understand why people use the new VS scheme. If you haven't learned either scheme, I would recommend giving both schemes a whirl and see which you prefer. I'm going to use the ReSharper 2.X/IDEA scheme as that's the one I know. I'll post my ReSharper defaults in a separate blog post along with the Live and File Templates that I use.

@Tony - I noticed that KeyJedi went wonky on me and reported wrong keystrokes partway through. I tried re-recording the episode a few times, but KeyJedi never behaved itself completely. Trust the keystrokes that I call out rather than the ones KeyJedi reports if there is any disagreement. As for expanding the KeyJedi window, I'll do that for the next screencast and cross my fingers that KeyJedi cooperates.

@All - Thanks for watching and the great feedback!

# May 8, 2008 7:32 PM

J.P. Hamilton said:

Good stuff. Can hardly wait for the next one!

# May 8, 2008 9:26 PM

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About james.kovacs

James Kovacs is an independent architect, developer, trainer, and jack-of-all-trades, specializing in agile development using the .NET Framework. He is passionate about helping developers create flexible software using test-driven development (TDD), unit testing, object-relational mapping, dependency injection, refactoring, continuous integration, and related techniques. He is a founding member of the Plumbers @ Work podcast, which is syndicated by MSDN Canada Community Radio. His article, “Debug Leaky Apps: Identify And Prevent Memory Leaks In Managed Code”, appeared in the January 2007 issue of MSDN Magazine. James is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) - Solutions Architect and card-carrying member of ALT.NET, a group of software professionals continually looking for more effective ways to develop applications. He received his Masters degree from Harvard University. Check out Devlicio.us!