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Comment by contextfree | Hacker News Reader

Running multiple instances of VS (or any other desktop app) should work the same as before (shift-click on taskbar), not sure what was happening there.

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Once the app is already running and visible in the taskbar, you can right-click the icon in the taskbar, and click the link with the same name as the app (e.g. for Google Chrome, the link I'm talking about says "Google Chrome"). This will open a new instance of the app.

Shift click? Didn't try that yet. I always just click the VS shortcut again, and voilà: a new instance is launched.

Wait, are you opening it from the Start screen? That switches by default instead of opening a new instance, but for desktop apps there's an app command (right click) to open a new window. I'd still recommend shift-click from the taskbar though (same as in Win7).

I think this may be an issue that will be popping up a lot, people thinking that everything has to be started from the start screen when everything works just as it always has from the desktop (minus a start menu, which is actually the start screen).

I think the issue here is more that he probably didn't know how to start a new instance from the taskbar in Win7 - which is understandable as it's not exactly obvious - and was used to doing it from the start menu. However, you could make a case that switching to an existing instance is the more mainstream expected behavior and starting a new instance is a bit more advanced, so it's ok for it to be tucked away a bit more (but convenient enough once you know how).

also

- right click on the running instance in the task bar and select Visual Studio

- middle click on the already running instance in the task bar

same as with Windows 7

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