Anson Horton asked how people are using IntelliSense in VS.NET. He mentions at least two modes: typing and browsing. There is another mode that I would love to see and that is prototyping. In the example than Anson gave, when the user starts typing after the “dot” and is typing a method or property that does not exist, I would like to see IntelliSense give up instead of forcing an existing closest match onto the user. Instead, I would like to see a progression that goes something like this:
someVar.| <- at this point IntelliSense dropdown appears
someVar.Undef| <- at this point IntelliSense should be able to sense that there is nothing currently implemented that matches what user wants.
someVar.UndefinedProperty;| <- at this point VS.NET should offer some way (perhaps via a smart tag or tooltip) to offer to implement the property OR
someVar.UndefinedMethod(var1, var2, var3);| <- at this point VS.NET should offer a way to implement the method.
Granted, this would be more complicated with VB.NET due to its syntax, but I'm sure something can be figured out to address that as well.
posted @ Tuesday, March 9, 2004 10:20 AM