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DXCore Components – BigHint

December 6th, 2010

Big hints are large tool tips which describe the active feature or provide other helpful information. This is what the big hint looks like:

DXCore Big hint preview

A big hint will always have a title, some helpful text information and a close button in the upper right corner. By default, a hint can be repositioned by dragging it to the desired location using the mouse. But bear in mind that sometimes it is not possible, for example, when you see the description of a refactoring highlighted in the Refactor! popup menu. Big hints go away automatically when they are no longer needed, or after clicking the Close button which will suppress future appearances of this hint.

Some big hints will have a “Learn more…” hyperlink in the bottom right corner. You can click this link to bring up the associated User Guide topic.

The big hint control doesn’t present on the Visual Studio toolbox by default. You have to manually add it by selecting the “Choose Items” in the context menu of the Visual Studio toolbox and locating the BigHint in the list:

DXCore Toolbox Choose Items...

DXCore Big hint inside Choose Items... dialog

DXCore Big hint Toolbox item

Here’s the Properties window, containing available properties, their categories and default values:

DXCore Big hint properties

and the Events list:

DXCore Big hint events

The BigHint component is located in the “DevExpress.CodeRush.PlugInCore” assembly. It is derived from the “BigHintBase” base type from the “DevExpress.CodeRush.Core” assembly:

DXCore Big hint hierarchy

Here’s a list of properties in alphabetical order:

Property name

Description

ActiveHint Gets currently active hint. Use this property when IsSingleton is set to true. Note that it is hidden from Intellisense.
Color The color of the big hint.
DisableOnDismiss Set this property to true if you want to disable the hint when it is dismissed.
DisplayLimit The number of times hints for this feature should be displayed before they are suppressed. If you want your hint to be displayed this many times every VS session, then set ResetDisplayCountOnStartup to true.
Feature The name of the feature this hint is associated with. This name is displayed on the “Big Hint” options page where users can enable or disable hints for individual features.
IsHintStuck Returns true if this hint was stuck on any text view. Note that it is hidden from Intellisense.
IsSingleton Set this property to true if you want only one hint to be displayed at a time.
OptionsPath A path to the options page where users can configure settings related to the feature that triggered this hint.
ResetDisplayCountStartup Resets the display count for this hint each time DXCore/CodeRush loads. If true, this hint will be shown the first time the DisplayLimitfeature is used in each IDE session.
StickRange Gets stick range, that is a source range used as flag to hide this big hint when the text caret is moved out of the range. Note that it is hidden from Intellisense.
StickSourcePoint Gets stick point that is a source point which is used as a flag to hide this big hint when caret is moved out of the point. Note that it is hidden from Intellisense.
Text The text displayed in the hint.
Title The text displayed in the title of the hint. Keep this text very short.
UserGuidePage The name of the user guide page to show when the user requests assistance.

Events:

Event name Description
DisableFeature Occurs when the user requests to disable the feature associated with this hint.
GetFeatureAssistance Occurs when the user requests assistance with the feature associated with this hint.
StuckHintHiding Occurs when the big hint that was stuck to any text view is going to be hidden.

Here’s a list of methods for using of this control:

Name Description
ShowAt Displays the big hint at the specified position, e.g. Point, SourcePoint, Control, or line and offset in the active text view.
ShowAtCaret Displays the big hint at the editor text caret.
ShowAtLowerRight Displays the big hint at the lower right corner of the specified rectangle.
ShowUnderCaret Displays the big hint at the editor text caret.
StickToTextView Creates a hint window and sticks it to the active text view. This method has various overloads.
UnstickFromTextView Removes all bindings to text view from this big hint.

Global big hints options can be set on the appropriate options page. See the “How to use DXCore BigHint component” topic, to learn more on BigHint usage.

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Products: DXCore
Versions: 10.1 and up
VS IDEs: any
Updated: Dec/06/2010
ID: D042

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