VSCode.Email Issue #103 (Activity Bar Position)

Issue #103 (Activity Bar Position)04/10/24

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If you're looking to maximize VS Code's UI, one option you'll want to consider is adjusting the position of the Activity Bar. The Activity Bar is the bar that appears on the left side of VS Code's UI, giving you access to the file explorer, search, source control, etc.

If you right-click anywhere on the Activity Bar, you'll see the option called "Activity Bar Position" which allows you to select the Default (left), Top, Bottom, or Hidden. Just below that menu item, you'll see the option to "Move Primary Sidebar Right".

Changing Activity Bar Position in VS Code

Moving the entire sidebar is a little different from the 'position' menu. For example, if you choose "Top" for the Activity Bar position, notice what happens.

If you happen to have one of the sidebar panes open, you'll see the Activity Bar go to the top of the sidebar instead of the left side of it. So "top" here means it goes to the top of whichever side the sidebar is already on. But if you happen to have all your sidebar items closed (which you can do by hitting CTRL/CMD-B) you'll actually notice the entire activity bar will disappear.

The Activity Bar is still technically there, it's just temporarily hidden until you use CTRL/CMD-B to open one of the panes again. Once you do that, it's then visible above the sidebar as usual.

One last tip related to the Activity Bar is found in your UI settings. If you search for "Activity Bar" in your settings, you'll see the setting called "Icon Click Behavior".

Icon Click Behavior in Activity Bar Settings in VS Code

This allows you to change what happens when you click one of the Activity Bar icons. By default, clicking an open item will close that item (the "toggle" option). But you can instead choose the "focus" option, which keeps the pane open and simply focuses it.

Now on to this week's hand-picked links!

VS Code Tools

Double — An AI-powered coding assistant inside of VS Code, designed to generate high quality code and assist you with programming tasks.

CSS Nesting Syntax Highlighting — A VS Code extension that adds syntax highlighting to the CSS nesting feature, which is now part of the CSS spec.

Free Your Newsletters From the Inbox — Meco is an app for Gmail and Meco Mail users, to move your newsletters to a space built for reading so you can declutter your inbox in seconds. Sponsor

VS Code Speech — A VS Code extension from Microsoft that adds speech-to-text capabilities to VS Code. No internet connection is required; all voice audio data is processed locally on your computer.

VS Code Theme of the Week

Greative — Named using a combination of the words "great" and "creative", this theme has color choices specifically selected for helping those with color blindness and general contrast choices for better reading comprehension.

View Large Image

As you can see in the screenshot, there are generous use of purples, but that's generally dependent on the language of the file. For example, HTML syntax highlighting looks very different.

VS Code Articles & Videos

VS Code 1.88 (March 2024 Updates) — The latest updates to VS Code include custom editor labels, native code coverage support, folding markers in minimap, Copilot improvements, and more.

Simple Browser in VS Code: My Coding Experience Just Leveled Up! — A tip on previewing your localhost setup using VS Code's built-in 'simple browser' feature.

The Morning Paper for Tech — Want a byte-sized version of Hacker News that takes just a few minutes to read? Try TLDR's free daily newsletter. It covers the most interesting tech, startup, and programming stories in just 5 minutes. No sports and no politics. Sponsor

📺 GitHub Copilot's @Workspace Deep Dive — YouTube video from the VS Code team introducing and diving into the features of Copilot's new @workspace participant feature.

Best of the Rest

Codel — A fully autonomous AI Agent that can perform complicated tasks and projects using terminal, browser, and editor.

Quartzite AI — An advanced AI prompt editor that allows you to easily craft complex prompts using an intuitive Markdown editor.

Anytime Mailbox — Business starters, are you in need of a business address separate from your home? Anytime Mailbox provides a seamless solution, securing a private, professional address with added benefits like mail forwarding and scanning for ultimate convenience. Sponsor

JetBrains' Unremovable AI Assistant Meets Irresistible Outcry — It seems like this problem was a little blown out of proportion and a fix was implemented in a release in late January, but here's the report on it.

Suggestions?

If you have any link suggestions, including a tool, article, or other resources related to VS Code or another IDE, send it via DM on X: @LouisLazaris or just hit reply on this email.

That's it for this issue.

Happy VS Coding!
Louis
VSCode.Email
@LouisLazaris