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Michael De Abreu
Michael De Abreu

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This I still miss from VSCode

Right now, there is not introduction to be made for VSCode. It's one of the most used code editors for web development, and out-the-box it provides an amazing experience. Yet, there a few things that I sill miss, and they are not provided, even with 3th party extensions.

A better debugging bar

I have to say, that this is my list, and you may disagree with this, but I don't like the debugging bar. You know? That one that appears when you are debugging and has not space for its own? That's is one issue for me at least, every time it will be on top on other things, and you could say: Hey, but you can move it. And, I do. Every time. Because, it doesn't matter where I sent it to, I will need to interact with the thing under at some point.

How would I improve it? Well, you have the Activity Bar, that would a good place for that. Or the Application Bar. That works for me. Even the status bar could be better. Well, maybe not, but you get my point.

The Debugging Bar can be moved only on top of the thing, and although you could use your CSS skills to place it elsewhere, you would need to do it each time you start your VSCode, or use a 3th party extension that allows you to rewrite the CSS on-the-fly. Not very convenient, if you ask me.

A stop and restart buttons on the task list

There were once and open issue about this: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/49738, but is now closed. What can you do instead? Click the "Play" button again, and select either restart or stop. I really don't know this has been requested more, I think it would be so much better if you could have the restart and stop button instead of the play one.

Favorites to the task list

With this new monorepo thing, and the fact that we like to put each task as an individual task in the package.json, finding tasks could be better. I mean, yeah, you can go and select "Run task" and then find the one you need, but lets be real, it would be easier for us to have a top list of the task we need. I mean, most of the time you will end up running the same 3 or 4 task, at the most. Even if you are working in a monorepo, with multiple projects and libraries, at the end, you need like: start the thing in dev mode, start storybook and start the test runner, so I think having them at the top of the list inside a favorite section would really improve my experience as a user.

That's all folks!

I would like to know if you miss something from VSCode. I know my list is not long, but this is a list of things that I literally miss everyday, but I'm just too lazy to actually do something about this. SorryNotSorry. So, let me know in the comments, what do you would to see implemented or improved in VSCode?

Top comments (4)

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momander profile image
Martin Omander

I also miss being able to record and replay keyboard macros. I'm sure there is an extension that lets you do it, but in my experience it can be quite time-consuming to find an extension that does what you need and is reasonably bug-free.

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michaeljota profile image
Michael De Abreu • Edited

Yeah, this is definitely something that you would need, specially on demos and presentations. Do you know if VSCode has an open issue for this?

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momander profile image
Martin Omander

I don't know if there is an open issue for this. When it comes to demos, I have started using the Replay Clipboard extension. When you press the magic key, the extension types out the text from your clipboard with variable delay, so it looks like you are typing it manually. Very useful!
The only drawback is that it only gets the line breaks right if the file's line-endings are CRLF, not LF. If you're on Mac or Linux, click LF in the status bar at the bottom and change it to CRLF before you copy the text.
marketplace.visualstudio.com/items...

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niksin