Visual Studio Express

Hi all,

So I've been playing around some with visual studio express, and I'm still 
running into some difficulties.

First of all, while I very much like having a program help me with syntax and 
the like, I find that if a program is offering help when I don't even want it, 
it's a lot more distracting than actually helpful. so here's the situation I'm 
coming across.

any time I start a new project or load up an existing one, I get stuck in some 
kind of tree view. From looking through the menus, there are a lot of options, 
but I see nothing that allows me to get into the code editor. The hotkey list I 
have says that you can press f7 to get there, but even that doesn't work. 
Sometimes I can press escape to get out of the tree, but not always.

Secondly, when I do manage to get to the code editor, I'll be right in the 
middle of typing or editting a line, and all of the sudden up pops an error 
list. that's all well and good if I'm compiling, or ask it to check for errors, 
but I've not even finished the line yet.

I'd much much rather begin with the ability to edit, compile and debug my code, 
and be able to explore the helpfulness of the program as I go, not because it 
insists on putting things in my face while I'm typing. Does anyone have any 
suggestions? Some way of simplifying it a bit so I can actually try out my 
code? I'm usually really good at learning software but I'm truly baffled.

Oh, and I do have the visual studio scripts installed.
Thanks!
Christy

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