See Joe White's blog that discusses this feature request: http://excastle.com/blog/archive/2007/02/11/14543.aspx

This is a very important issue for me – I am forced to reset all Resharper shortcuts just because F12 is defined differently and Ctrl+B brings up the object browser. If ctrl+B would bring up the METADATA generated text from code, it would greatly improve usability. Thanks for the great product!!!

This issue got even worse with R# 3.0: simply enabling Resharper forces F12/Ctrl+B to navigate to object browser. Apparently there is no longer a way to get the source from meta data (verified in both VS2005 & VS2008 RTM, build 565)

Apparently R# under VS2008 RTM doesn't even jump to the right location in Object Browser. I reported that in new issue: RSRP-54012

This drives me mad :(
Where can I find class attributes (like [Serializable] or [Designer]) in the Object Browser? Or how can I disable R# temporarily without uninstalling it?
R# does not really make me more productive when I have to spend hours on things like that :(

Michael, all that info you can find in our Quick Doc feature.

2all: I've spent some time and now can confirm that this feature of VS is not available via any extensibility mechanism available. It is purely feature of C# language service, implemented in C++ without any COM interfaces available. The only thing we can do with it - do not intercept VS "Go to declaration" command when navigating to compiled symbols (libraries). This means that users will have navigation working differently depending on the source of navigation. For example, double-clicking in any ReSharper tool window will still open Object Browser. I'm not sure if this is what everybody need, but let's discuss this.

So, why do you want [metadata] view? What information do you see there which is not available otherwise? Like I said, most information is available via Quick Doc feature of ReSharper without any navigation at all. Since ReSharper 4 you can even pin it.

Ilya, yes, different behavior is acceptable. Should be configurable.

I, personally, need meta data source because object browser...

• Does not contain method and parameter attributes
  
• Declarations cannot be copied as ready to use member declarations (can only copy either one full name, or the text from description)
  
• Very poor search - cannot search member names / parameters / docs inside one class using regular text search tools (plain or regex) - very useful for large classes.
  

Just looked at the attributes in more details: In VS2008, object browser shows a section called "Attributes" at the bottom, but when I looked at the type "System.Int32", it showed


whereas reflector, which I trust much more, shows this:



As you can see, information is 1) more complete, 2) easier to read (i have to open the type and then open the Base Types branches in the tree just to see parent class/interfaces.

Open the VS built-in Code Definition Window while in the Object Browser.

Yes, please offer an ability to not intercept the "Go to declaration".

Metadata view is nice because you can use text search as well as shows the declaration in a format that I use more often (i.e. I'm always editing C# code, using the object browser is a much different way of viewing the same information and requires a completely different set of keystrokes.)

Object Browser is something that VB users are more used to. If you're editing C# code and you don't come from a VB background Object Browser is completely foreign (and annoying).

The VBNET/C# differentiation seems to be not true.

However, the Object Browser presentation language is pretty much random (C#/VBNET), which makes it a problem.

Sorry, I'm old. Pre-VBNET the object browser was primarily a VB thing. You could only use it in other languages if the components were COM.

C++ers would use oleview32.exe instead of the Object Browser, which is no much difference.

Alas, Object Browser is all we've gotten right now.

Please don't remove Visual Studio features. This one is an example. I hate it when something I was using before is removed because Resharper decides it should be so.
What I want to see when I use F12 or Go to Declaration is the pseudo source code based on metadata. If Resharper wants to offer something else, such as quick access to the object browser, then it should use another keyboard shortcut, and at any rate it should not remove the Visual Studio feature, as is the case now.
Please provide a quick-fix for this for Resharper 3.1.

Code Definition window (Ctrl+\,Ctrl+D) still shows code from the metadata, and can be viewed and copied. I propose making F12 the default shortcut for that window, and bring it up as a tabbed document window instead. Works for me.

This request has my vote. It's one thing to change the key mappings (Go to Definition is Ctrl+B instead of F12), but its quite another to disable a feature altogether. I use "Go to Definition" quite a bit and really dislike not being able to easily navigate to the metadata now. Please add an option to toggle the interception of the "Go to Definition" command.

The Object Browser does not display Extension Methods while the [from metadata] feature does and that renders the OB almost useless for those of us who are using C# 3.5 features extensively. For example, hit F12 on an IEnumerable<> variable and compare results with OB and with From Metadata. The OB gives very little useful info while From Metadata displays virtually everything that the compiler would recognize in a clear, complete, searchable and easy to view format. I realize that some people like GUI displays more than source code, but developers need completeness first for a feature to be useful. As people start using extension methods, enumerables and other C# 3.5 stuff more and more, the shortcomings of the OB will become more painful for them.

i dont like object browser too =( shortcut "ctrl+f" not work, cant search in current class members or return types, also "Alt+\ Go to file member " not work in object browser

I don't think Object browser is a comparible alternative to MetaData view.

In addition to all the reasons above (most notablely that MetaData view is a Code view and therefore homogeneous within the IDE).

Another reason is that Navigate Forward and Backwards do not work with Object Browser. This is HUGE for me.

Is there a way to even disable this feature?

Yuri Astrakhan said that he could see the Attributes section in the object browser in vs2008. I however cannot and I see no options to enable this feature.

I really do hate this forced feature of Resharper.

Is there any intention to alter this or at least give the option to disable it?

One interesting thing I just discovered is that from the Code Definition window (Ctrl+\,Ctrl+D), F12 appears to bring up the metadata view on any types you open from there and likewise on any type contained within the resulting metadata views.

This is so far the number one irritant upon using resharper - I'm not sure why go to definition even gets overridden in the first place. This seems like a feature no one asked for (I can say for certain it's not something I was looking for when reading the features). Best case to me would be to leave the source view to act the way it used to. I don't find myself using F12 anywhere else.

(Thanks Derek for the workaround)

Fixed in upcoming 5.0. Look at "Navigate from here -> Object Browser", "Navigate from here -> Metadata View" in 5.0 too.

Thanks for finally having fixed this!

Wonderful fix! Much better than the built-in :)

Time to close the issue?

Thanks!!!