I use Find a lot in Visual Studio 2005. And by a lot I DO mean A LOT. And although I passed by this one before in VS 2005, I never actually tried it.. it's very neat!!

From HowToGeek's blog post:

Visual Studio 2005 includes a great feature that they call Incremental Search, but I like to call “find as you type”, because that’s really what it does.

To start using this feature, just hit Ctrl + i once, and you will see the cursor change to an arrow with binoculars. At this point, you can just start typing, and Visual Studio will automatically start finding.

To start an “Incremental Search” you just hit Ctrl + i, but there’s more keys that work with this:

  • Ctrl + i - Start Incremental Search \ Find Next Instance
  • Ctrl + Shift + i - Find Previous Instance
  • Esc - Cancel Search
  • Backspace - Works just like you’d expect.

 

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Fire up Visual Studio and give it a shot........Once you come to get the idea, you will never use the Find dialog (CTRL+F) and it's Find Next (F3) again.