For those who don’t already know, Quick Nav is CodeRush’s Symbol Search.
It’s what you use when you’re trying to find the declaration of some code element when you know part of it’s name.
Launching Quick Nav
The default shortcut for this feature is Ctrl + Shift + Q.
[Tip: If you’d prefer to use another hotkey to launch Quick Nav, you can customize this in the Options dialog (Ctrl+Shift+Alt+O) on the shortcuts page (IDE\Shortcuts) in the Navigation section.]
When Quick Nav is launched, you’ll see the following screen:
[Note: For demonstration purposes, I’ve loaded the source of OpenLiveWriter (A non trivial 27 project open source solution.]
See immediately how CodeRush provides you with maximum information regarding the symbols within the solution.
Alongside the Name of each symbol, you’ll see it’s Namespace, Project Name and File Type.
When multiple similarly named symbols are found, there should be no confusion as to the nature of these items.
Navigation
Arrow keys will let you navigate the items presented.
Enter will take you to the declaration of the highlighted items.
If you begin to type the name of some symbol, then the list will be filtered to show only those items whose name contains the characters you type.
See in the next image, how I have entered the term ‘Hyper’
See how CodeRush has removed all items from the list which do not contain the term ‘Hyper’
Camel Case Searching
Next imagine you were looking to find the declaration of ‘TaskDialogHyperlinkEventHandler’.
You might choose to type ‘TDH’, those being the first letters of the first 3 words which make up that symbol’s name.
CodeRush responds with a list of all terms which include those capital letters in that sequence highlighting where it found the letters within the found items.
Show me the Options
All examples used thus far have searched the entire solution, however you may also have noticed a note in the bottom left of our screen shots.
If you tap Ctrl, you can change the default search options.
If you do so, the screen will expand to show the following:
As you can see these options are arranges neatly into 4 groups: Scope, Types, Members and Access. All of the items within are used to influence the items that are shown (or not shown)
Within Scope, the available items are Solution, Project, Namespace and File. Your choice of one of these restricts the symbols that are visible to Quick Nav relative to your current location.
Any combination of Types, Members and Access may also be independently chosen to suit your needs.
For those who prefer to keep their hands on the keyboard, these options may all be set/toggled using the indicated shortcut keys.
(Scope:1, 2, 3, 4 Types: C, S, I, E, D Members: M, P, V, F and Access: W, O, N, T, B)
For those who are happier to use the mouse the same options will react to a simple click.
So use Ctrl+Shift+Q to launch Quick Nav and Jump to any symbol in your solution in seconds.
.. and feel free to leave us your feedback to indicate how we might improve this and other features.