Sometimes using this abomination is the only way to go "up" in the filesystem.
Yes! So annoying that finder doesn't just have button for "go up in hierarchy" at least somewhere on every screen (whether it's regular Finder or a save/open dialog). It's totally baffling to me. We can find room for the "Tag file" feature nobody uses, but a "go up in hierarchy" button is apparently too much to ask for.
Thanks, I've only been using macs for ten years or so and never knew :-). Discoverability of features is a thing. Having something that is hard to discover is almost the same as not having the feature at all.
There is a menu option Go → Enclosing Folder, which clearly lists the keyboard shortcut.
In general, responsibly designed Mac programs should have a menu option for every available command. This is highly discoverable (assuming users know to look in the menus, and the menus aren’t so long or deeply nested that the commands are buried).
Unfortunately in an era of web apps, mobile devices, hacky cross-platform software, etc., fewer and fewer users properly learn the basic Mac platform UI conventions. This particular convention (commands available as menu options with keyboard shortcuts listed next to them) has been largely unchanged for >30 years.
I’m not sure about the precise origin of the shortcut for opening the enclosing folder, but it dates from at least the beginning of OS X.
One Finder shortcut which is less discoverable which you might also find useful is ⌘↓ (command-down) for opening a selected item.
My default VS layout is to have two full screens: editor on the left screen where I often have a source file and its tests open side by side and on the right screen - the source tree, the test runner, the output window, team explorer etc.
If you have 2012 or newer, just grab the item tab and pull it to another screen.[1] You can also rearrange the tabs within a window to have for example, several files open side by side.
No? You seem to be talking about title bar behavior. There is a normal dropdown menu right in the top center of the standard 'Save' and 'Open' dialogs.
Yes! So annoying that finder doesn't just have button for "go up in hierarchy" at least somewhere on every screen (whether it's regular Finder or a save/open dialog). It's totally baffling to me. We can find room for the "Tag file" feature nobody uses, but a "go up in hierarchy" button is apparently too much to ask for.