How to display full documentation of a method as you type in VS?

Question

The title is pretty descriptive... Is there any extension that let me see FULL documentation of the method I'm typing ? I would like to see the documentation as I can see it in Object Browser with description of parameters and everything not just some "summary".

Of cause with an option to see all overrides. It may be part of intelisence or I don't know what it does not really matter.

Impediment

+1 I don't know of such features, but this would be nice to have it once in a while. – Voleta

You can vote for this feature on the developer community website for visual studio : developercommunity2.visualstudio.com/t/Documentation-popup/… – Ade

Answer 1

I'm sorry to say, but the answer is no. I can say this with confidence because I myself spent many, many hours looking for such a thing. Good luck.

Possess

It is very sad if you are right :(. But if you are I hope somebody makes some extension for this. It should not be that hard... – Impediment

Answer 2

The idea is that you get a summary in the intellisense tooltip, and can press F1 to show the full help, or F12 to jump to the declaration (which usually includes the documentation).

I find I usually only need to read the full documentation once or twice and then the tooltips give me enough information to go on. Also, when I find myself needing the full documentation, I usually need to browse further (e.g. investigate the whole class and other methods). I can understand you wanting to see all the information, although I must say I personally prefer it the way it is.

I suspect if you actually had what you're asking for you might want to turn it off (or at least down) after a few weeks when it keeps taking over your whole screen to tell you stuff you already know about methods you type 20 times a day. That's probably why there aren't any tools out there to do it already.

If it helps, tools like Resharper give "better" intellisense tooltips. (I say "better" in quotes because I find Resharper gives me too much information, and the default Visual Studio approach of just showing me one overload at a time is actually a lot less 'in your face'. Many people like to have all this information at their fingertips though). The resharper tooltips still won't get you to a full copy of the documentation page though.

Mier

I just say what I said to similar answer that was here and somebody deleted it. I have had this feature in ALL other IDEs I used(and I used 3 complex IDEs(not counting VS) for different languages till now). I never turned it off. I find it extremely useful - I'm not going to list reasons. Also I haven't seen anyone to turn off this feature off in those IDEs (it is possible). btw. for example in NB IDE you can browse the documentation directly in the pop-up window by clicking the links in it. – Impediment

As I said, I can understand you wanting this feature - but i'm not aware of any add-ins that will currently provide it. This may change with VS2010 as it would make writing such an add-in much easier. – Mier

I have checked the way plugins for VS are created and also the intelisense example. It should be quite easy to write plugin to do what I want and even easier to change example plugin for displaying intelisense so that I would display full documentation. Unfortunately I have no time to write it right now. However this question has 70 views and I have found other people searching for this feature asking at different forums. Somebody should write it instead of speaking about it. – Impediment

Answer 3

Would Dynamic Help be close enough? (Help > Dynamic Help or Ctrl+F1, D)

Its a tool window that adjusts its content to what is under your caret in the text editor

Tutti

The dynamic help feature has been removed from Visual studio 2010 as stated in this block leedumond.com/blog/dynamic-help-removed-from-visual-studio-2010 and confirmed by the VS Help Project manager. So I cannot even say how close the dynamic help would be as I'm using VS 2010 and I cannot downgrade. – Impediment

Answer 4

There is a very useful extension called Click Docs that will do what you are looking for.

Directorate

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