I’ve recently been learning more about code snippets in VS 2005, and I’ve found some nice resources online. Basically, if you haven’t done anything with Code Snippets, they are a simple, extensible way for you to perform a relatively complex task within the IDE with just a few keystrokes. For example, let’s say you want to write a try-catch-finally block. Normally there’s a lot of repetitive code there, as you type try{ … } catch (Exception ex) { … } finally { … }. With code snippets, you can (by default in C#) just type try and then hit tab (twice, at least in my setup) and it will automatically create the try-catch block for you. For a try-finally it’s tryf. There is no trycf for try-catch-finally, but they’re easy to write yourself, so perhaps I’ll write one later today if I have time.
You can find a bunch of code snippets others have written at GotCodeSnippets.net. You can learn more about how they work from this .NETRocks show, which includes several useful links to more information at the bottom of the page.