visual studio presentation mode

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Use Visual Studio in Presentation Mode

Have you ever seen a presentation using Visual Studio, but had a hard time seeing the too-small fonts in the editor, Solution Explorer and menu system? How about all the custom extensions and themes the presenter used, making it harder to figure out what exactly was going on? Perhaps you were the presenter? Here’s how Visual Studio Presentation Mode can help.

When doing any type of presentation or demo, it’s is crucial the audience fully understand what you’re presenting. If there are barriers to make that harder, then your presentation is not going to be as effective as it otherwise could have been. Customizations that differs from the default Visual Studio behaviors that your audience are already familiar with often cause confusion too.

Here are some typical barriers:

• Code is too small
• Text in tool windows and menus is too small
• Custom toolbar button layouts
• Extensions that change the behavior of Visual Studio
• Custom color themes

So, to remove as many barriers as possible, we need a fresh install of Visual Studio without any customizations. Yikes!

Or we can use Presentation Mode to open an instance of Visual Studio that looks exactly like a fresh install. Here’s what you get with a Presentation Mode instance:

• Default settings, window layout, theme, and keyboard shortcuts
• No extensions (other than machine-wide ones)
• No settings synchronization with the normal Visual Studio instance

You can then customize any settings to configure Visual Studio for your demo or workspace. For example, change the font sizes to 18 for the Text Editor and 12 for the Environment or whatever value makes you happy. When you close Visual Studio these settings will be preserved for the next time you use Presentation Mode.

There are two ways of entering Presentation Mode:

The easy way

Install the Tweaks extension and open any solution, project, or file in Visual Studio. That ensures that the extension fully initializes. Now you can right-click the Visual Studio icon in the Windows task bar to open in Presentation Mode.

This makes it super easy to start a new Presentation Mode instance of Visual Studio.

Watch demo of Presentation Mode

The also somewhat pretty easy way

This is how the Tweaks extension mentioned above does it under the hood. You can do the same thing yourself if you don’t want to install the extension.

Open the Developer Command Prompt or Developer PowerShell and execute the following line:

devenv /RootSuffix Demo

You can swap the word Demo with whatever other word you want to create yet another isolated instance type. That might be useful for situations where you want different customizations depending on what type of project you’re working on.

For instance, you may want certain extensions and window layouts only when doing web development. This gives you that flexibility.

Watch demo of customized instances

Having the ability to isolate Visual Studio for various development scenarios and demo purposes is quite powerful. They are also easy to create and well supported – even in older version of Visual Studio. I’m curious to hear how this works for you, so let me know in the comments below.

Mads Kristensen is a principal program manager on the Visual Studio team and has published over 150 free Visual Studio extensions. He blogs about anything related to Visual Studio and can often be found hosting various shows on the Visual Studio YouTube channel..

Discussion is closed. Login to edit/delete existing comments.

I probably wouldn’t go through all of this. Just reduce your screen resolution to 720p (or a high DPI variant of it) and you’re good. Everything will scale accordingly, including the apps you might want to run (not only show their code inside VS), mouse cursor, etc.

As a teacher this is a great benefit, especially when teaching remotely, because I have my normal dev environment and the environment that matches the students (and is customized via a shared settings file) so we can communicate at the same level about the IDE. However I use separate instances altogether. This is the only way to get true separation of VS stuff. But there are still things that are shared and it is inconsistent as to what.

For example under Extensions some, but not all, of my custom extensions are installed in both even though I didn’t install any under the demo environment. I would say that it is those that require an actual installation (like CodeRush) but that isn’t entirely true. For example ‘Extensibility Essentials 2019’ is installed in both but ‘CSS Tools 2019’ is not installed in the experimental instance. It is random, to me.

Another area is with VS settings themselves. Even with multiple instances VS shares some settings and there is nothing you can do about it. I wrote up a bug about this a while back and MS came back and said it was by design. So I periodically play the game of seeing my teaching settings getting overwritten by my normal settings and I have to import them again. I doubt the experimental instance version is going to fair much better.

I do think MS has come a long way on separating instances out but until all settings are different between instances (and experimental instances) then trying to run multiple VS instances/roots on the same machine is hit or miss. However for just demoing something I could see a use for this if you don’t already have another instance running. I’m personally running 3 different instances of the same edition on my machine. It is awful at update times but at least I get a semblance of separation.

Outside of people on the Visual Studio team demoing to the public- when would a normal dev want something like this?

Presumably the extensions/shortcuts/layout someone has installed make them more productive and make the IDE easier to use- a benefit when demoing something. I can’t ever see when I would want to demo with out my customizations.

A lot of people present at local user groups, coding conferences, internal learning sessions, large code review sessions with their team etc. Presenting with Visual Studio is a lot more common than you might initially think.

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Posted on May 10, 2023

How to Use Visual Studio Like a Pro When Presenting Your Code

Visual Studio is great to write code and create something amazing, but sometimes, you may want to use it for a different purpose: presenting your code to an audience. Whether you are giving a demo, a workshop, a lecture, or a webinar, you want to make sure that your audience can see and understand your code clearly. That's where Presentation Mode comes in.

Presentation Mode is a feature that lets you open an instance of Visual Studio that looks like a fresh install, without any customizations, extensions, or settings synchronization. This way, you can avoid any distractions or confusion that may arise from your personal preferences or environment. You can then adjust any settings that are relevant for your presentation, such as font sizes, themes, window layouts, and keyboard shortcuts. These settings will be preserved for the next time you use Presentation Mode.

How to Enter Presentation Mode

There are two ways of entering Presentation Mode in Visual Studio: with an extension or from command prompt without extensions.

With the extension

The easy way is to install the Tweaks extension and open any solution, project, or file in Visual Studio. Now you can right-click the Visual Studio icon in the Windows task bar and select Presentation Mode .

This will launch a new instance of Visual Studio with the default settings and no extensions (other than machine-wide ones). You can then open your solution or project and start presenting.

From Command Prompt

You can do the same thing yourself if you don't want to install the extension. Open the Developer Command Prompt or Developer PowerShell and execute the following line:

This will launch a new instance of Visual Studio with the root suffix PresentationMode. You can swap the word PresentationMode with whatever other word you want to create yet another isolated instance type. This can be helpful for scenarios where you need different settings based on the kind of project you are working on. For instance, you might prefer specific extensions and window layouts only for web development. This allows you to have that versatility.

How to Customize Presentation Mode

Once you have entered Presentation Mode, you can customize any settings to configure Visual Studio for your presentation style. Here are some common settings that you may want to change:

• Font sizes : You can change the font sizes for the Text Editor, Environment, Tooltips, Statement Completion, and more from Tools > Options > Environment > Fonts and Colors . A good rule of thumb is to use at least 18 points for the Text Editor and 12 points for the Environment.
• Theme : You can change the theme from Tools > Options > Environment > General . You may want to choose a theme that matches your presentation slides or has good contrast for your audience.
• Window layout : You can change the window layout from Window > Reset Window Layout . You may want to minimize or close any tool windows that are not relevant for your presentation, such as Solution Explorer, Output, Error List, etc. You can also use Window > Auto Hide All to hide all tool windows until you hover over them.
• Keyboard shortcuts : You can change the keyboard shortcuts from Tools > Options > Environment > Keyboard . You may want to use the default keyboard shortcuts or choose a scheme that matches your audience's expectations.

These settings will be saved for the next time you use Presentation Mode. If you want to reset them to the default values, you can use Tools > Import and Export Settings > Reset all settings ¹.

How to Exit Presentation Mode

To exit Presentation Mode, simply close the instance of Visual Studio that you used for presenting. This will not affect your normal instance of Visual Studio or any other instances with different root suffixes.

Presentation Mode is a handy feature that lets you use Visual Studio in a clean and distraction-free way for presenting your code to an audience. It allows you to customize any settings that are relevant for your presentation style, such as font sizes, theme, window layout, and keyboard shortcuts. These settings will be preserved for the next time you use Presentation Mode. To enter Presentation Mode, you can either use the Tweaks extension or the Developer Command Prompt or PowerShell. To exit Presentation Mode, simply close the instance of Visual Studio that you used for presenting. I hope this article has helped you learn how to use Visual Studio in Presentation Mode and how to make your code presentations more effective and engaging.

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How to Give a Killer Presentation With VS-Code ?!?

Published on sun 17 april, 2022.

• Architecture
• Visual Studio Code

In this tutorial, you will learn how to optimally present code from within Visual Studio code. As a developer, being asked to present your code seems to be a very common ask in 2021. Doing code reviews over Zoom, talking about some code that you have written in a remote job interview, talking at a meet-up, or even making YouTube videos are all things I have done within the last week. As the old saying goes, the devil is in the details 😈Being able to present code in a professional manner is an essential skill nowadays, so how exactly do you present code in a great way in Visual Studio code... read on to learn 🔥🔥🔥

Before getting into VS-Code, let us talk about a great free presenting tool for Windows called ZoomIt . ZoomIt will allow you to either zoom in on certain areas on your screen or annotate the screen while you are presenting. ZoomIt has been created by Microsoft for technical presentation, it's free, so there's no harm in trying it out!

After installing ZoomIt, you can use the shortcut key Ctrl and 1 to Zoom in on the screen where your mouse is currently located. The shortcut combo of Ctrl and 2 will annotate the screen. Within annotation mode, you can either annotate freehand, draw a box, circle or arrow 👉🏻👉🏼👉🏽👉🏾👉🏿

Better Live Coding

Coding on its own is hard enough, so is presenting. Trying to do both at the same time exponentially doubles up the chances of mistakes from occurring. Having to worry about live coding in your presentations, just adds a new source of stress. Typos, syntax issues, code that does not compile are the things that make people who present code wake up in the middle of the night with sweats. Instead of doing live coding in a talk, you can use a handy extension called HackerTyper . Hacker Typer allows you to record yourself programming ahead of time. Hacker Typer records all your keystrokes within VS-Code into a buffer. After recording and saving your keystrokes, you can then replay the same sequence again later. In your presentation, you can wildly mash any key on your keyboard and your code will appear on screen how you expect it to and in the right locations. Using Hacker Typer makes it look like you are live coding, however, it allows you to concentrate on making your talk points rather than the code. Making a recording using Hacker Typer is simple :

• Open a file or a new VSCode window
• Open the command palette, Ctrl + Shift , type PHackerTyper: Record Macro
• Open a new file and start typing some code
• Every keystroke you make will be recorded into an in-memory buffer
• When you have finished open the command palette again type execute HackerTyper: Save Macro

After recording your macro, when you are ready to give your presentation, follow these steps:

• Open a new file
• Open the command palette, type in Execute HackerTyper: Play Macro
• Select the name you selected
• Now type anything on your keyboard and the code you recorded earlier will start typing 💥

VS-Code Themes

When doing a presentation, the general rule of thumb is that a darker theme looks best on electronic displays, e.g. computer screens, and a lighter theme looks better on projectors. To make your code easy to read for your audience, it is recommended to use a light theme. If you need inspiration about which light theme to use in VS-Code for presentations, I recommend the Github theme . Downloaded over 2 million times, this is an extremely popular light theme to use that looks good and will make your code pop 😍

Presentation Mode

When presenting code, you do not want your audience to become distracted by unneeded visual noise. You do not need solution explorer, the terminal, the sidebar, or any annoying notifications distracting your presentation. To ensure a smooth, distraction-free presentation, you could present your code using the in-built Zen mode to remove these distractions. To start zen mode, open the command palette ( Ctrl + Shift + P ) and search for 'zen'. Zen mode is OK, however, you can go one step further with an extension, [Presentation Mode](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=jspolancor.presentationmode). The Presentation Mode extension will render code within VS-Code in a nice distraction-free view. After installing the extension, to start presentation mode, open the command palette ( Ctrl + Shift + P ) and search for 'presentation mode' option.

You now know about all the tools required to make a really cool and smooth presentation in VS-Code. Use these tools and remember practice makes perfect. Armed with this new knowledge, I'm sure you will nail your presentation 💅. Happy Coding 🤘

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6 Quick Tips for Presenting Code in Visual Studio

As a frequent conference presenter and attendee, I often see live code walk-throughs. There are a variety of tweaks you can make to optimize the Visual Studio experience for presenting code to others. It’s important to minimize visual distractions, size text properly, and practice your demo in a low resolution.

To that end, here’s 5 quick tips for presenting in Visual Studio.

1. Run Full Screen

Hit Alt+Shift+Enter to toggle full screen mode. This hides the Windows taskbar, title bar, and many items in the Visual Studio UI such as Solution Explorer. This is especially helpful when presenting on low resolution projectors. As a side-note, this mode is also useful for daily use since it helps avoid distractions while coding by hiding all other OS elements.

2. Configure Full Screen Mode

Visual Studio full screen mode hides all explorer windows by default. You may decide to show certain items to assist with the demo. Simply re-enable displaying selected portions of the UI while in Full Screen mode and Visual Studio will keep track of your separate full screen settings. So once you select UI elements you’d like to display in this mode, it will remember from now on. Handy. (also, remember you can open files by hitting Ctrl+, and typing the name, so you likely don’t need to display the Solution Explorer).

3. Enable Presenter Mode

Presenter Mode is a simple feature in Productivity Power Tools . Once you’ve installed this extension, all you have to do is hit Ctrl+Q to place the cursor in the quick launch input, then type the word present. Select Present On/Present Off to toggle. You’ll find font sizes throughout the UI are increased.

4. Resize Further as Needed

In larger rooms with smaller projection screens, it may still be difficult for people in the back to read code, even with presenter mode enabled. In this case you can increase the font size of individual files by holding Ctrl and scrolling or via the zoom dropdown in the bottom left-hand corner of Visual Studio. When using the above techniques, this is rarely necessary, which is good because this setting doesn’t “stick” between files. If you need a more global solution, you can increase DPI scaling in Windows , though you may notice sizing quirks in any apps that haven’t been updated to support DPI scaling.

Zoom It is a free tool that allows you to zoom in and annotate specific portions of the screen. Simply hit Ctrl+1 to zoom in on a specific portion of the screen. This can help draw attention to an area and is also useful when a piece of UI outside of Visual Studio can’t be scaled by other means. I’ve even seen some presenters utilize Zoom It throughout an entire presentation, though I find this a bit disorienting.

6. Use the Light Theme

The standard light theme of dark text on a white background is typically easiest to read on projectors. The lower contrast alternatives look great on a nice LCD, but often lack sufficient contrast for projector use. (Credit to @craigber )

You can consider simply creating multiple Visual Studio settings files and switching between them as desired.

Have other tips for presenting code? Please chime in below.

4 replies on “6 Quick Tips for Presenting Code in Visual Studio”

Alt+Shift+Enter to toggle full screen mode AWESOME.

Thanks for the tip!

1. Put the fonts up to something reasonable to read at the back of the room (14pt? 16,18, 20pt?) 2. Before the presentation, check what it will look like from the back of the room. What will your attendees be seeing? 3. Create a whole new user on your OS (Windows/Mac) with everything configured for presenting. Notifications off. Fonts set, etc.

Layouts-O-Rama is a nice nuget package for creating/managing multiple layouts for Visual Studio. Might come in handy as well so I wanted to share it.

Good stuff! Thanks for the tip Rob!

Comments are closed.

manuelmeyer.net

Everything Azure Infrastructure

.NET Power Tip 6: Presenting in Visual Studio (Presentation Mode & ToolBox Snippets)

This blog post covers a few tips for holding presentations that include some activity in  Visual Studio, such as live coding. It explains how to switch VS into presentation mode with a single command and how to store your code snippets in the toolbox. In about 80% of the presentations that I have witnessed so far, as soon as the presenter switched to Visual Studio it became very hard to follow because the font size of the text and menus was far too small. Remember that even if you, as a presenter can read it without any problem, the people in the back seats who might as well suffer from less clear eyesight, will not be able to read it and therefore not follow your explorations.

What can you do about that?

MAKE IT BIGGER!

The following section shows a couple of possibilities how to tackle the problem.

Use PresentON / PresentOFF from the Visual Studio PowerTools

First, go to TOOLS –> EXTENSIONS AND UPDATES and install the Productivity Power Tools for your edition of Visual Studio.

You can then navigate to the Quick Launch Window (Ctrl-Q) in the top right corner and use the PresentON and PresentOFF   Commands to make EVERYTHING bigger. That includes menus, tab headers, text editors, tool boxes, etc.

Using the PresentEdit   command you can even modify the presentation mode settings and adjust the font family and sizes to your needs. In the picture below I adjusted font size for menus to 14 and for text editors to 18.

Use Window Layouts   in Visual Studio 2015

VS2015 allows you to save a window layout via WINDOWS –> SAVE WINDOW LAYOUT .  You can prepare different window layouts to be used for working and for presenting. It is even possible to switch from one layout to another by using a keyboard shortcut.

Check out these links for more information on window layouts:

http://geekswithblogs.net/WinAZ/archive/2015/04/16/visual-studio-2015-custom-window-layouts.aspx

If you don’t have VS2015 yet, you can achieve the same features with a tool called Layout’O’Rama:

https://rvduren.wordpress.com/2015/06/15/multiple-window-layouts-in-visual-studio/

Use a Lower Resolution

Whenever I am presenting myself, I tend to use a very low resolution, even if the beamer supports the high resolutions that are common nowadays.  Switching to a low resolution leads to everything in Visual Studio being bigger. It can be hard to perform the demo due to the lack of space, but if you already prepare your demos on a low resolution setting, it works like a charm. Your audience will appreciate you working a bit harder for them to see what you are doing.

Use a Magnifier

Use a magnifier tool whenever you need to show something that you just couldn’t make bigger. Windows has a built-in magnifier, that you can open using and close using the [Win – +] and [Win – -] shortcuts. However, using a magnifier is no excuse to not make stuff as big as possible. Fiddling around too much in the magnifier can be very annoying.

When coding in the text editor, collapse all the tool windows and use ZOOM, (Ctrl-Mousewheel) to make the text BIG. When preparing your session, keep your lines shorter as usual!

Full Screen Mode

Switch to full screen mode (Shift-Alt-Enter on my machine, check you settings) or VIEW –> FULL SCREEN to avoid distraction by the tool windows.

Use the ToolBox for Code Snippets

Very often in a coding demo, you want to insert prepared snippets. I often see people switching to a text file in notepad and copy pasting stuff from notepad to visual studio. However, there are better solutions. Of course, you could use the code snippet functionality built into Visual Studio. But, I think I know a better alternative: Just use the toolbox. When preparing your demo, just mark a section of code and drag it onto the toolbox.

You can then rename it and give it a good name. By right clicking on the toolbox you can even create multiple tabs to structure your code snippets:

During the demo, you just open the toolbox, grab the snippets and insert it into the text editor, you don’t even have to change windows.

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I think we all have seen presentations where Visual Studio was used during the demos but were we had a hard time because the fonts were too small in the editor, Solution Explorer and menu items, I have to admit that I have been guilty making this same mistake.

I recently discovered that Visual Studio has a Presentation Mode. Presentation Mode is a feature that lets you open an instance of Visual Studio that looks like a fresh install, without any customizations, extensions, or settings synchronization. This way, you can avoid any distractions or confusion that may arise from your personal preferences or environment. You can then optimize any settings that are relevant for your presentation, such as font sizes, themes, window layouts, and keyboard shortcuts. These settings will be preserved for the next time you use Presentation Mode.

To enter presentation mode, open a Developer Command Prompt and execute the following command:

devenv /RootSuffix DemoMode

Remark: You can swap the word DemoMode with whatever other word you want to create yet another isolated instance type.

This will launch a new instance of Visual Studio with all the default settings. Now we customize our Visual Studio settings to optimize them for presentation purposes (e.g. increase the font size, change the window layout, …). These settings will be saved for the next time you open a Visual Studio instance using the same RootSuffix.

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