Integrate Stack Overflow into IDEs? - eclipse

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:
go to Tools - Macros - IDE
create a new Module with a name of your choice under "MyMacros". Or use an existing module.
paste the above code into the module
add a reference to the System.Web namespace (for HttpUtility) to the module
close the macro IDE window
go to Tools - Options - Environment - Keyboard
type "google" in the Show Commands Containing textbox. The SearchGoogleForSelectedText macro should show up
click in the Press Shortcut Keys textbox, then press ALT+F1
click the Assign button
click OK
This is all taken from Jeff Atwood's Google Search VS Macro post, just modified to search StackOverflow instead.

Answer 2

I don't think I'll be able to get any work done with SO integrated into an IDE. Its almost as bad, if not worst than integrating Digg/Reddit into an IDE.

Answer 3

In Visual Studio, you could add a shortcut to search for a highlighted term in StackOverflow. Jeff Atwood wrote about doing something similar with Google in his Google search VS.NET macro blog entry.
Using this approach would allow you to highlight a term or error message (or any other selectable text in the IDE), press the shortcut keys, and then see all the matching results on StackOverflow.
I'm sure there's a way to do this in other IDE's as well.

Answer 4

If StackOverflow can begin identifying the language that each code snippet contains, then I could see an code-completion/code-snippet plugin to an IDE that responds to a special syntax for performing searches on SO and inserting the code portion of accepted answers.
Eg: in my source I might type:
//# read an XML file
The //# syntax prompts the plugin to start a search and display a list of question titles. When I pick one, it inserts the code portion of the accepted answer.

Answer 5

I don't know about Eclipse, but for Visual Studio, if someone really wanted this they could easily add the SO RSS feed for the "Start Page News Channel" so the SO question list appeared in the start page, or even better, narrow it down with a tag (like for C#). It's not exactly "integration", but it would provide a quick look at recent things with extremely little effort. However, not sure how "useful" it would be.

Answer 6

You have the RSS plugin for Eclipse to read the StackOverflow feed.
But I'm with you, a SO Eclipse plugin would be really cool.

Answer 7

You could just set it as your Start Page in Visual Studio.
Not sure what benefit this would provide... but to each his own.