Quick Timesaver When Coding Xaml

Try this in your Xaml…

<Button
VerticalAlignment="Center"
HorizontalAlignment="Center"
Margin="5"
Height="30" />

If Intellisense is doing its job, your actual key-strokes were

<Bu  <tab>
ve <tab> c <tab>
ho <tab> c <tab>
ma <tab> 5 <hunt for right arrow, hit arrow, fingers back on keyboard>
he <tab> 30 <repeat hunt for right arrow>

I get why Intellisense can’t figure out when to move me to the right of the double quotes for the margin and the height, but I hate looking for the right arrow.

Today, with a little help from a friend, I fixed that by opening Tools->Options->Environment

->Keyboard and entering the letters lineend into the search box.

Click on Edit.LineEnd, type Control-semicolon into the Shortcut keys entry box, and press the button Assign.

Presto! control-semicolon is now a synonym for “go to the end of the line” and I’ve cut the time it takes to fill in values in Xaml significantly.