Have other tips for presenting code? Please chime in below.Visual Studio for Mac makes it easy to develop your app's service with its support for the latest ASP.NET Core Web development platform. You can consider simply creating multiple Visual Studio settings files and switching between them as desired. The lower contrast alternatives look great on a nice LCD, but often lack sufficient contrast for projector use.
The standard light theme of dark text on a white background is typically easiest to read on projectors. I’ve even seen some presenters utilize Zoom It throughout an entire presentation, though I find this a bit disorienting. 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. Simply hit Ctrl+1 to zoom in on a specific portion of the screen. Zoom It is a free tool that allows you to zoom in and annotate specific portions of the screen. 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.
When using the above techniques, this is rarely necessary, which is good because this setting doesn’t “stick” between files. 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. 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. Enable Visual Studio Presentation Mode via Quick Launch 4. You’ll find font sizes throughout the UI are increased. 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. Presenter Mode is a simple feature in Productivity Power Tools. (also, remember you can open files by hitting Ctrl+, and typing the name, so you likely don’t need to display the Solution Explorer). So once you select UI elements you’d like to display in this mode, it will remember from now on.
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. You may decide to show certain items to assist with the demo. Visual Studio full screen mode hides all explorer windows by default. 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. This is especially helpful when presenting on low resolution projectors. This hides the Windows taskbar, title bar, and many items in the Visual Studio UI such as Solution Explorer.
Hit Alt+Shift+Enter to toggle full screen mode. To that end, here’s 5 quick tips for presenting in Visual Studio. It’s important to minimize visual distractions, size text properly, and practice your demo in a low resolution.
There are a variety of tweaks you can make to optimize the Visual Studio experience for presenting code to others. As a frequent conference presenter and attendee, I often see live code walk-throughs.