Document Outline for Windows forms

Many of you may be familiar with the Document Outline feature in word. Did you know Visual Studio also has a Document Outline. It's there in VS 2003 for Web Forms, in 2005 MS has made it useful to windows developers also.

To open the Document Outline window goto View | Other Windows | Document Outline or Ctrl-Alt-T.

Some things you can do with the Document Outline Window.

• See a list of all your controls
  • This is not just a list though, it's a nested view of your form via treeview. Showing what container each control is in. This is a useful way to view a complex form. Any windows developer will tell you sometimes a form gets complicated and it's difficult to get a good picture of what is going on with splitters, panels, tabs etc.

• Select controls to change their properties
  • We have all done it; clicked on a control on a form and inadvertantly moved it. With the Document Outline you can select a control so that you can use the property explorer without actually touching the form. You can also do this in the property browser itself using the list box at the top but it's easier to select the control from the Document Outline Window, because you can see all of them at once. If anyone from MS is reading this I would like to be able to multi select controls from this window.
• Move controls from one container to another
  • One very cool feature is being able to move control from one container to another using the Document Outline. for example; you can drag a control from one side of your Split Container to the other or from a panel to the form, right in the Document Outline window. This can be very useful on a complicated form with many controls.

I'm not sure how much I will use this window once developing on a regular basis with it. But I can think of a few projects it would have come in handy.