Tips and Tricks for:  VB.Net, C#,

Visual Studo.Net

The Problem:   The Visual Studio.Net Solution Explorer's Font Size is too Small for Presentations

When you're trying to demonstrate a program in Visual Studio the font in the Solution Explorer is much to small for a reasonable demonstration.

Solution: Change the Font of the Dialogs and Tools Windows

The key is that you have to change the font before you're allowed to change the font size in the font options.

Let me step you through it.  Let's start with the before picture which shows the solution explorer using the default font. It looks OK on a desktop screen but at 1024x780 resolution, or above, it doesn't project well.

To fix this start with the following procedure:

A) Use the Tools > Options Menu and as usual and go to the Fonts and Colors pane.  Select Show settings for: "Dialogs and Tools Windows"

B) Change the font from "Automatic" to something else.  Arial Narrow works pretty well.  Once you change the font name, you can change it's size.

I've chosen 16, just to illustrate the point.  A moderate size like 12 works for using it on screen and for projecting.

C) Once you press OK, you'll get the following warning:

That's because you won't see the changes in all windows and dialogs, including the Solution Explorer window, until you exit Visual Studio.Net and get back in to it.

D) Once you get back into Visual Studio.Net, the fonts in the Solution Explorer and many other places will be the new font face and size as shown by this "after" picture.

As you can see 16 is large.  But it's visible from the back of the room, even when using 1280x1024 resolution.  12-14 points seems to be good as well.