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Visual Studio is a great tool for developing websites using ASP.NET - it can be made even greater by tweaking some default settings. Use this blog to change the default start-up options, assign a navigate backward key, insert attribute quote marks and open pages in HTML view by default.
- Visual Studio - default settings to change for ASP.NET (this blog)
- Changing Visual Studio Start-Up Options
- Opening Visual Studio pages in HTML view by default
- Inserting Attribute Quote Marks Automatically
- Creating a Navigate Backward Key
Posted by Andy Brown on 02 August 2011
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Visual Studio - default settings to change for ASP.NET
At Wise Owl we do our ASP.NET website development using Visual Studio 2010, but there are a few settings we always change when we install it. I thought it might be useful to list these in one place!
The settings are:
Setting | Notes |
---|---|
Start-up options | When I load Visual Studio I don't want to see a Microsoft news group, but I do want to see the project I've just been working on. |
Changing default format for pages | I spend most of my time editing web pages in HTML view, so it's annoying that they open by default in design view. |
Quotation marks | By default, Visual Studio doesn't surround attributes with quotation marks in HTML view, even though it's so obviously what you would want. |
Navigation keys | The F12 key takes you to the definition of a word, but we find it useful for the SHIFT + F12 key to take you back. |
The rest of this blog shows you how to change the default settings shown above. One thing to watch out for:

All of the changes to default settings in this blog use the Tools -> Options dialog box.
Even though the diagrams shown are for Visual Studio 2010, the menu options and dialog boxes are similar for Visual Studio 2005 and 2008.
- Visual Studio - default settings to change for ASP.NET (this blog)
- Changing Visual Studio Start-Up Options
- Opening Visual Studio pages in HTML view by default
- Inserting Attribute Quote Marks Automatically
- Creating a Navigate Backward Key