Friday, March 16, 2007 5:53 PM
I never noticed some of the things missing in the Visual Studio Express editions compared to other editions. As I've mentioned before, there's no icon editor (check out IcoFX as an even better replacement).
There's also no incremental find. This very cool feature lets you initiate a search using CTRL+I. Then as you type, it locates matches in real-time. Very cool, but it's not there in Express.
I also just recently noticed that the Express editions don't show change tracking in the code editor. In other editions, the left margin changes color to show where you've made changes in the code (at the line level).
You also can't attach the debugger to running processes. This probably isn't as useful for most hobbyist developers, but it's still a shame.
I remember reading that Express editions don't support more than one project in a solution. I hadn't bothered to try this until recently, but I noticed that it does indeed work. Maybe it's new with service pack 1. Hmm...
Any other big features missing? Of course the whole point is that it's a reduced-functionality edition. In fact, it's amazing how much it supports for the price! It's just good to know if you are used to the regular features.