Designers? Show me the code!

Originally posted to Shawn Hargreaves Blog on MSDN, Wednesday, September 6, 2006

If you're like me, you probably spend a lot more time editing code than you do using graphical designers. Not that I have anything against designers, you understand, but I only tend to use them for my initial project setup, whereas I edit code all the time.

If you're not like me, you probably know this already, in which case I apologise for wasting your time! But I'm an old C++ guy. Visual Studio is relatively new to me, and I never did much WinForms coding, so I only recently figured this out.

For months I've been repeatedly getting caught out by double-clicking on my source files in Visual Studio, only to have them load into the designer when I wanted the code editor. I've been fixing this by laboriously right-clicking on the file and selecting "View Code". It turns out there is a better way...

Right-click, select "Open With", choose "CSharp Editor", and click the "Set as Default" button. Tada! Now things are reversed. Double-clicking will bring up the code editor, or you can right-click to choose "View Designer".

Now I'm happy.
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