Visual Assist and Web Developer Tools

A few years ago I was introduced to Visual Assist, a productivity tool for Visual Studio users that adds some cool features and a whole load of nice keyboard shortcuts which help you write code faster and make project navigation a breeze.

One of the most common shortcut keys I use is Shift+Alt+O (Open file in solution), however if the code / text editor doesn't have focus, you'll end up seeing a warning popup (or if you have web developer tools installed, it will try to open a website).



This is something I've just grown to live with, always trying to make sure the text editor has focus, but I still see this prompt at least a few times a week. Today I thought there must be a way round it and it's surprisingly simple really:

You want to disable the inbuilt shortcut for Shift+Alt+O used by Visual Studio.
Go Tools->Options->Keyboard, and in the Show commands containing box,
enter OpenWebSite



Click the Remove button, and that shortcut key will no longer work. However, Visual Assist's shortcut key is still locked to the text editor. So now enter OpenFileInSolution in to the Show commands containing: box. You'll see that Shift+Alt+O is bound to text-editor only.



The Use new shortcut in box will already be set to Global, now click the Press shortcut keys box and press Shift+Alt+O. You should see your shortcut keys appear in the box, now click the Assign button.

That's it. You've reassigned the Visual Assist shortcut so you can press it anywhere within Visual Studio, it will work no matter which sub-window you have selected and you should no longer see that Web Developer Tools prompt!


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