Home button on VS File Explorer

Hi all,

I've been playing with the VS File Explorer today in Visual Studio 2010 and I can't figure out what the "Home" button does. I've tried selecting different folders and items on either pane, but can't seem to get the "Home" button to do anything.

Thanks,
-sara

http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford

Hi Sara,

Thanks for your question. 

The home button will bounce you back to the directory that you have configured as your "Default root folder" in the settings window. Having said that, it appears that you only notice a change when clicking the home button if you have set another folder to be your current default.

To see the button in action, set your default root folder to your desktop. Then use the "Change root folder" button to select somewhere else on your machine (e.g. Program Files). Using the home button now can bounce you back to your default root folder should you want to.

The usability about the home button does leave something to desired, it literally came out of one of our developers building it for himself and us thinking it would be handy for others.

Appreciate any feedback & that you want to write a blog post about the tool. I will just reply here rather than to your email as well if that's alright :-)

Kind regards,

John-Daniel Trask

No worries! Thanks for the quick reply! I really appreciate it!

Here's some quick feedback on the UI.

• Home - I even tried to undock the tool window, thinking maybe "home" had something to do with docking. Maybe "View Default Root Folder". Not as short as home, but gets the point across (and it's for a tooltip, so it isn't bad to be longer to get point across.)
• Snap to Current Solution - I thought this was going to add whatever file or project or solution to the current solution, like "snap this to that"
• Change Root Folder - I thought this was going to change the default root folder thingy in the Options dialog. Then i realized it was just changing the view. Maybe "Open Root Folder" or "Browse to Root Folder" to imply it's just a view action and not implying a save that comes with change/select verbs?
• Options - Command Prompt - i noticed that you can run different commands here, like notepad.exe. There could be potential here to open this up to more commands than just a command prompt.

Hope that makes sense.

BTW, my blog post will go out Thursday morning Pacific Standard Time.

Thanks,
-sara