Last Updated: February 25, 2016
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· panodk

Visual Studio 2013/2012 enhanced scroll bar and code preview

Magna Carta of code

Do you ever lose context debugging a 1,000 lines code in Visual Studio? Tired of cursing a colleague's name while traversing their "Magna Carta" of source code? Have you ever searched for breakpoints, errors and modified lines only to lose context of the previous location? Enable debugger, step into, step into, step into...whoa where am I?!

Get control and efficiently visualize long source files with the enhanced scroll bar in Visual Studio 2013 and 2012.

Features

Quickly gain context and control of long files by seeing the entire file, as a miniaturized map, in your enhanced vertical scrollbar. Hover the cursor over the scrollbar to see a magnified code preview without losing cursor focus. Drag the scrollbar up and down to see the text editor view in comparison to the entire file. Errors, bookmarks, breakpoints, updated code highlights, they are all there colorfully marked in the scrollbar as you would expect.

Feel empowered and breathe a sigh of relief.

Picture
Visualize the entire file. Breakpoints, errors and modified code are highlighted. Mouse over the scrollbar to view a magnified code popup.

Enable feature

In VS 2013: Go to Tools > Options... * Scroll down to *Text Editor > All Languages > Scroll Bars. Select Use map mode for vertical scroll bar.

In VS 2012: Download and install the Productivity Power Tools 2012
Then go to Tools > Options > Productivity Power Tools > Enhanced Scroll Bar.

Reference