“View this as root” – A Solution Navigator features in VS 2010 Productivity Power Tools

Visual Studio 2010 productivity power tool introduced many new and interesting features with in the Visual studio 2010 which are really great for developer and will help all of us improve the productivity. You can download the Productivity tool from http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/d0d33361-18e2-46c0-8ff2-4adea1e34fef .

Solution Navigator is a new window that has been introduced with in this power tool which is an enhanced Solution Explorer. This window having many features like search code, highlight code, code navigation, File open, save, edit status etc. Along with these features one of the interesting features that I liked is “View this as root”. This features is very much helpful when you have the many projects with in a solution or your solution hierarchy is large. To start “Solution Navigator” , go to View > Solution Navigator or use (Ctrl + W, F) as shortcut key.This will open the “Solution Navigator” window.

Look and feel wise it is same as “Solution Explorer” but  functionally it is quite different. You will find a “icon” at the right to side with all the files/folder under that solution as shown in below picture.

You can click on that Icon or use Ctrl+Click to make the selected  point as present root. This will navigate you to a different form with in the solution navigator with the selected point as root.

You will find one forward and backward button to move previous or next root point.  The most interesting point is that you can use “view this as root”  at any level of your solution hierarchy