Best Practices for Working with Multiple Monitors in Visual Studio 2010

Question

Now that Visual Studio 2010 has support for multiple monitors, I am curious how other people have their environments arranged. I have yet to come up with an arrangement that I am really satisfied with.

The current best I have come up with for my 2 monitor system is to have all code windows detached. Then, on my primary monitor, I am able to have two code windows side by side (using the Windows 7 keyboard shortcuts WinKey+LeftArrow and WinKey+RightArrow.) On my secondary monitor I put the rest of the IDE with all of the tool windows that are normally on the bottom (errors list, find window, call stack, etc...) docked where the code windows normally go. I've also tried having all those things detached and having almost nothing in the IDE proper.

The problems with this layout are:

• Newly opened code windows always open in the IDE, not on top of one of the detached windows.
• Detached code windows do not remember their exact placement from session to session (they are slightly off, having me to use the winkey + arrow key shortcut again and again for each window.
• There seems to be no way to have the code panes aware that they are on top of one another (IE -- multiple tabs.)
• The CTRL+TAB shortcut always displays on top of the IDE proper.
• The Code Panes are always "on top" of (children of) the IDE. So clicking on any code pane brings the IDE to the foreground, even when I care only about that code pane, and not the IDE.
• Other more minor issues...

What would go a long way to making this better is having the code panes detach such that they are tab strips that can have other code panes docked within them.

The new multi-monitor support in VS2010 is good, but it still seems really lacking.

Can these issues be solved with an add-in? If so, is anyone aware of one?

Is there a better way to work with the IDE on multiple monitors than what I am doing?

NOTE: While this question is subjective (there is certainly no "this is the best way and that's final" answer) I'd really like to know possibly better methods of working with the IDE than what I have come up with. The intent is not to start a "mine's best" flame war.

Answer 1

I'm late to this question, and VS2012 has been out for a while now, but there are Microsoft's Visual Studio Power Tools, which include the Document Tab Well. It lets you group tabs, put multiple tabs in each floating window, float windows by default, and so on.

In VS2012's power tools, it appears to be called "Custom Document Well", but seems to have the same type of functionality.

Answer 2

I always have my IDE on the right monitor, with all the editor windows and tools there. That leaves the left monitor for the programs to debug, my email client, wasting time on SO, and other stuff. You can have editor windows side-by-side even in older versions of VS by using vertical tab groups. This still works in VS2010 and allows you to rearrange them by dragging them between tab groups.

Sometimes I put the output and stack windows on the left monitor, below the debugged program, in order to have more screen real estate for looking at the code.