Question

Okay, this is just a crazy idea I have. Stack Overflow looks very structured and integrable into development applications. So would it be possible, even useful, to have a Stack Overflow plugin for, say, Eclipse?

Which features of Stack Overflow would you like to have directly integrated into your IDE so you can use it ‘natively’ without changing to a browser?

EDIT: I’m thinking about ways of deeper integration than just using the web page inside the IDE. Like when you use a certain Java class and have a problem, answers from SO might flare up. There would probably be cases where something like this is annoying, but others may be very helpful.

Answer 1

Following up on Josh’s answer. This VS Macro will search StackOverflow for highlighted text in the Visual Studio IDE. Just highlight and press Alt+F1

Public Sub SearchStackOverflowForSelectedText()     Dim s As String = ActiveWindowSelection().Trim()     If s.Length > 0 Then         DTE.ItemOperations.Navigate('http://www.stackoverflow.com/search?q=' & _             Web.HttpUtility.UrlEncode(s))     End If End Sub  Private Function ActiveWindowSelection() As String     If DTE.ActiveWindow.ObjectKind = EnvDTE.Constants.vsWindowKindOutput Then         Return OutputWindowSelection()     End If     If DTE.ActiveWindow.ObjectKind = '{57312C73-6202-49E9-B1E1-40EA1A6DC1F6}' Then         Return HTMLEditorSelection()     End If     Return SelectionText(DTE.ActiveWindow.Selection) End Function  Private Function HTMLEditorSelection() As String     Dim hw As HTMLWindow = ActiveDocument.ActiveWindow.Object     Dim tw As TextWindow = hw.CurrentTabObject     Return SelectionText(tw.Selection) End Function  Private Function OutputWindowSelection() As String     Dim w As Window = DTE.Windows.Item(EnvDTE.Constants.vsWindowKindOutput)     Dim ow As OutputWindow = w.Object     Dim owp As OutputWindowPane = ow.OutputWindowPanes.Item(ow.ActivePane.Name)     Return SelectionText(owp.TextDocument.Selection) End Function  Private Function SelectionText(ByVal sel As EnvDTE.TextSelection) As String     If sel Is Nothing Then         Return ''     End If     If sel.Text.Length = 0 Then         SelectWord(sel)     End If     If sel.Text.Length <= 2 Then         Return ''     End If     Return sel.Text End Function  Private Sub SelectWord(ByVal sel As EnvDTE.TextSelection)     Dim leftPos As Integer     Dim line As Integer     Dim pt As EnvDTE.EditPoint = sel.ActivePoint.CreateEditPoint()      sel.WordLeft(True, 1)     line = sel.TextRanges.Item(1).StartPoint.Line     leftPos = sel.TextRanges.Item(1).StartPoint.LineCharOffset     pt.MoveToLineAndOffset(line, leftPos)     sel.MoveToPoint(pt)     sel.WordRight(True, 1) End Sub 

To install:

1. go to Tools – Macros – IDE
2. create a new Module with a name of your choice under ‘MyMacros’. Or use an existing module.
3. paste the above code into the module
4. add a reference to the System.Web namespace (for HttpUtility) to the module
5. close the macro IDE window
6. go to Tools – Options – Environment – Keyboard
7. type ‘google’ in the Show Commands Containing textbox. The SearchGoogleForSelectedText macro should show up
8. click in the Press Shortcut Keys textbox, then press ALT+F1
9. click the Assign button
10. click OK

This is all taken from Jeff Atwood’s Google Search VS Macro post, just modified to search StackOverflow instead.