Code snippets technology exists for a single reason—developer productivity. One of the new features found in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 is the ability to insert code examples, or snippets. Code snippet is the name used in Visual Basic, but in Visual C# and other languages, it is known as code expansion. These snippets increase your productivity by reducing the amount of time you spend looking for code samples, by reducing the time required to learn to use an unfamiliar feature, and by supporting the reuse of code. You can also create your own code snippets.

IntelliSense Code Snippet

The features of IntelliSense Code Snippets are:

• The IntelliSense code snippet library consists of 380 prewritten pieces of code.

• You can add these reusable routines to your code and edit them using the pointers the code contains.

• The Visual Basic code snippet library is extensible; you can create code tasks that suit your business needs and add them to the library.

• These code blocks are available throughout Visual Studio

• You can add them through the context menu of the Code Editor.

• You can drag the XML code files from Windows Explorer onto your source code file.

• Each snippet or expansion is an XML formatted file.

• The extension of Visual Basic snippets is .vbsnippet and that of Visual C# code expansions is .xml.

  From: Microsoft