Hide Properties/Toolbox Pane when not in Resource View?

Question

Every time I view a form or dialog in Visual Studio (2005) the Properties and Toolbox panes show up on the right side of my screen. That's good to have because they are useful for manipulating dialogs.

However once I switch back to source code these panes just get in the way... is there a way to get them to go away automatically?

Answer 1

I've done something recently in VS2010 using a macro that shows and hides the Tools panel when switching back and forth from code to design view in asp.net MVC3 views. It could be easily adapted to do the same for your situation I think.

This goes in the EnvironmentEvents class file in in the VS Macro IDE after the pre-generated content.

<System.ContextStaticAttribute()> Public WithEvents CommandEvents As EnvDTE.CommandEvents


  Public Sub DTEEvents_OnMacrosRuntimeReset() Handles _
  DTEEvents.OnMacrosRuntimeReset
        CommandEvents = DTE.Events.CommandEvents
    End Sub

    Private Sub DTEEvents_OnStartupComplete() Handles _
        DTEEvents.OnStartupComplete
        CommandEvents = DTE.Events.CommandEvents
    End Sub

    Public Sub CommandEvents_AfterExecute( _
    ByVal Guid As String, _
    ByVal ID As Integer, _
    ByVal CustomIn As Object, _
    ByVal CustomOut As Object) _
    Handles CommandEvents.AfterExecute

        If DTE.Commands.Item(Guid, ID).Name = "View.ViewDesigner" Then
            DTE.ExecuteCommand("View.Toolbox")
        End If

        If DTE.Commands.Item(Guid, ID).Name = "View.ViewMarkup" Then
            DTE.Windows.Item(Constants.vsWindowKindToolbox).Close()
        End If

    End Sub

It could probably be better optimized using the guids of the event rather than the if statements. It works when you use the hot keys for switching views as well as the view menu, but not the context menu.