Editor Essentials

The Layout

VS Code's workbench has an Activity Bar on the left, a Side Bar with Explorer and panels, the Editor Area in the middle, and a Status Bar at the bottom. Each piece is re-layout-able by dragging.

Explorer and File Operations

The Explorer lists files and folders of the workspace. Right-click for new files, rename, delete and reveal in OS. Ctrl+P jumps to any file by name, Ctrl+Tab cycles recent files.

Multi-Cursor Editing

• Alt+Click - Add a cursor at each click.
• Ctrl+D - Select the next occurrence of the word.
• Alt+Up/Down - Move the current line.
• Ctrl+/ - Toggle line comment.

These small powers massively accelerate everyday editing.

Editor Groups

Split the editor into multiple groups with Ctrl+\. This gives side-by-side files, useful for editing a template and its stylesheet together.

Find and Replace

Ctrl+F searches the file; Ctrl+Shift+F searches the whole workspace with regex support. Replace with $1 backreferences works like a pro tool.

Key Points

• Master the Activity Bar, Side Bar and Editor Groups.
• Multi-cursor and quick file switching save minutes daily.
• Workspace-wide search covers refactors.
• Split groups enable side-by-side edits.