Dock Code Windows in Visual Studio 2010

Question

In Visual Studio, you are able to dock code windows in horizontal and vertical tab groups (something you can also do with tool windows).

However, when doing so you may end up with a lot of redundant screen space. What would be ideal would be if you could mix docking orientations for code windows. This is possible with tool windows in Visual Studio 2010. Here is an image showing the feature used for tool windows:

My question is: is it possible to get this same functionality with the code windows - i.e. being able to mix horizontal and vertical docking, like with the tool windows shown? I've heard rumours that its possible, but I've been unable to find any truth in that.

Answer 1

I too wish this was a naitive feature in visual studio, but there is one workaround by using the 'floating tab group' feature of visual studio

1. Move the visual studio main window out of the way (maybe to another monitor, or to smallest area of the monitor needed to see the tooling windows)
2. "Tear out" or Right Click > Float on the desired tab
3. Position the tab to your desire (I suggest using WinSplitRevolution, via codinghorror)
4. Repeat, note that you can move a tab to an existing 'floating' tab group

And voila!

There are some setbacks, some commands will pop up over the main tooling window instead of your current tab group etc. but its still pretty nice. I'm not sure if there's any changes coming in VS2012, but I haven't heard about anything related.