Becoming A ReSharper Keyboard Ninja: Part 1 - Quick Documentation View

I need to get better at using keyboard shortcuts. When I'm doing common tasks over and over in Visual Studio, there are always threads spinning off in the back of my mind wondering if there is a way to accomplish the same thing using a shortcut. Well now I'm going to finally give those threads a callback and become more proficient with the keyboard shortcuts that are available to me.

My goal is to journal my experience, learn each keyboard shortcut, and write my thoughts here as I go along. This stuff is undoubtedly documented on ReSharper's site, and most likely it's more thorough.

To get started I downloaded the ReSharper default keymap that comes with R# 3.0. I'm using R# 4 EAP Beta 1, so we'll see if it's changed much. At the time of writing this I could not find a published version of the 4.0 default keymaps. The shortcut cheat sheet is great, but its going to take a little diving in to get a real sense of what I can do with them all.

The keyboard shortcuts I will be using are from the ReSharper 2.x / IDEA Scheme. (Change your keyboard shortcut scheme by using the ReSharper menu -> Options -> General. Look for the keybaord scheme section.

The first shortcut is CTRL+Q - Quick documentation pop-up. (If you're using the Visual Studio keymap the shortcut is CTRL+SHIFT+F1) This shortcut is a great time saver. It gives you a very quick, but thorough overview of the method or variable that you have your cursor on. Here is what it looks like:

In the upper right corner of the dialog, you can click "Go To" to go to the declaration of the method or variable.

"Read More" seems like it should take you to some external resource, but with the build I'm using it redirects you to a page on ReSharper's website which does not have anything to do with the context of the quick help dialog. Bug??

The ellipse in the upper left hand corner indicates that there are more attributes than it has room to show you. If you click the ellipse you will see more detail about the attributes defined on the class.