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 Have Visual Assist X disabled by default?

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Dzyann Posted - May 20 2014 : 2:57:37 PM
Is there a way that when Visual Studio Starts have Visual Assist disabled and enable it when I need it?

Thanks!

Dzyann.-
7   L A T E S T    R E P L I E S    (Newest First)
accord Posted - May 28 2014 : 12:55:34 PM
Dzyann: Very interesting and detailed answer, thank you!

quote:
For example when searching for symbols and such it takes a while to show the available symbols.

Which version of Visual Assist are you using? We have made improvements lately which sped up things. 2 concrete improvements:

1. in Build 1925:
- Improved response of Find Symbol in Solution (Alt+Shift+S) dialog and VA View Symbols in Solution list. (case=54946)

2. in Build 2036:
- Improved performance of Methods in File list in large files. (case=81815)

I remember noticing the difference after both improvements, so it's worth trying if you're not already using the latest build.
feline Posted - May 27 2014 : 11:46:19 PM
If you don't like the colours that VA is using, but you do want to use VA, then the answer is to change the VA colours. We have tried to pick reasonable default colours, but monitors, colour schemes and personal preferences all vary quite widely. You feel the colours are bright, but I have previously seen people saying the colours are far to pale, and are not clear.

To try and deal with the impact of lots of parsing at once, you can have a look at this page, which lists a couple of settings you can use to try and limit the amount of parsing, or stop parsers running at the same time:

http://docs.wholetomato.com/default.asp?W133

IDE profiles sound like they are going to help here, and let you achieve a good result.

For VA remembering the disabled state, we are working on the theory that if people have installed VA, they want it to be active. If VA is not active when they restart the IDE and load the IDE then they conclude something is broken, and want to know how to fix this. This already happens when something happens to stop VA loading normally. In general, simply disabling VA for certain languages or extensions is enough to solve the problems people are seeing.
Dzyann Posted - May 27 2014 : 12:28:17 PM
Feline,
Regarding the VA colours, I didn't know where to change them, but I imagined it was possible. Since I already like resharper colours I didn't see why go through the effort. I still think is not good to have colours that are so intense for UI. But I guess that is a matter of likes.

I understand both have to parse the solution and that can slow things down, what it is interesting is that VA seems slower overall.

Regarding the IDE profiles, I did not know such thing was possible, and it seems very interesting. I will test it out, that could potentially solve the issue. I normally use shortcuts to access things, so it wouldn't be too hard.

I still think it wouldn't be a bad a idea to make VA remember the disabled state.

Thanks a lot!
feline Posted - May 26 2014 : 2:42:11 PM
First the VA colours, are you aware you can very easily change the colours that VA uses, to make them softer, and easier on your eyes? The VA colours are in the VA options dialog, they are also in the IDE options dialog, all of the items names start with "VA ", making them easy to find in the list.

If you are running ReSharper and VA at the same time, then both tools need to parse your solution, which can slow things down when loading the solution, since its extra work.

If you are using VS2010 or above, you can have separate IDE instances, with different extensions installed in each instance. You can create separate instances, or profiles, on the same machine. Just launch the IDE like this:

"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\\Common7\\IDE\\devenv.exe" /RootSuffix Demo

where "Demo" is the name of the profile. You can have as many profiles as you want, and different profiles get different extensions. To install extensions into a given instance, load the IDE and install the extension via the IDE Extension Manager.

So in your situation, if you wanted to try this, I would suggest making a couple of shortcuts to your IDE, and passing both the instance name and the solution path as command line parameters. This way you can launch the IDE and open your solution, and have the desired set of extensions installed and active for this solution.
Dzyann Posted - May 22 2014 : 11:12:08 AM
Thanks for your answer accord.

I have already disabled Visual Assist for certain extensions, but I find bothersome that you have to manually add each extension, plus that only means Visual Assist is not running for certain file extensions, it is still running.

I also use the Enable/Disable button for the projects, but if I don't first open only Visual Studio disable it and then open the solution, I find that the loading time the project is slower than used to be without Visual Assist.
It seems to me that Visual Assist slows down the loading time of Visual Studio.

I am working both in C# and C++. I think it would be nicer if you could have Visual Assist remember the "disabled" option and then enable it when I am working with my C++ solution.

For C# I have worked using Resharper for years and I originally only had that. But when I started to work with C++ I learned Visual Assist offered support for it. I think it is a handy tool, but still performs slower than Resharper in C#.
For example when searching for symbols and such it takes a while to show the available symbols.
I also find that the colors used by Visual Assist are a bit too hard on my eyes, since they are darker, with the white background it has a higher contrast. Resharper has softer colors.

For these reasons is that I lean towards Resharper in C#, and I would find it very handy if Visual Assist remembered the disable option state.

It is possible that having Resharper and Visual Assist together is what is causing the slower loading time that I am experiencing in Visual Studio, but I can't be sure. And after noticing the delays Visual Assist has to show the symbols and such, I am inclined to believe Visual Assist is the actual reason of the issue.

Thanks for your time!

Dzyann.-
accord Posted - May 21 2014 : 3:10:05 PM
I have replied on Stackoverflow as well and figured it is the same question and the usernames are also matching :)
Based on your details there, you will want option #1.
But I'm still curious about "Is there anything we can do to improve our product so you can keep it enabled?"
You mention Resharper there, and the 2 should work together in peace, in theory.
accord Posted - May 21 2014 : 2:54:17 PM
You can disable Visual Assist via the extension manager which is remembered, but I don't recommend this method since you would need to restart Visual Studio every time.

Other 2 ways:

1. Disable Visual Assist for certain extensions:
VA Options -> Projects and files...

2. Enable/Disable Visual Assist via
VAssistX -> Enable/Disable Visual Assist

This is instant, but not remembered.

Anyway, why do you want to disable Visual Assist? Do you have compatibility problems with another extension or something else? Is there anything we can do to improve our product so you can keep it enabled?

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