VS 2010+

Visual Studio 2010 Reference Highlighting

by Richard Carr, published at http://www.blackwasp.co.uk/VS2010ReferenceHighlight.aspx

Visual Studio 2010 includes several new enhancements over previous versions. One of the new features is reference highlighting, which colours all instances of a symbol within the current document and allows fast navigation between them.

Reference Highlighting

Reference highlighting is a new visual aid and navigation feature in Visual Studio 2010. When the text cursor, or caret, is placed on a symbol such as a class name, object, variable, field or a member, every instance of that item in the current document is highlighted with a shaded background following a short pause. The highlighting is aware of the scope of variables. This means that items with the same name but that refer to different objects are not shaded.

Once highlighted, you can quickly navigate between instances of an item using the keyboard. To move to the next highlighted item, press Ctrl-Shift-Up. To jump to the previous item, hit Ctrl-Shift-Down.