I have used Visual Smalltalk Enterprise (VSE), which is an object
oriented programming language.  It has a wonderful code browser.  It
allows you to see all classes in a hierarchical fashion, to highlight
a class and see all its methods, to highlight a method and see the
code.  Having selected a method, a single click shows you all
implementors of that method and senders of that method.  You can also
get a list of all methods called by that method.  You can also quickly
get a list of all methods that reference a particular class.  And so
on.

The browser in VisualBasic.net seems extemely cumbersome and weak
relative to the Smalltalk browser.  I am looking for a powerful
browser to use in VB.net.  Maybe it's built into the product and I
just don't know where to find it.  More likely someone 3rd party has
designed such a browser.

Thanks in advance!

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Clarification of Question by theworld-ga on 10 Nov 2005 15:57 PST

Thanks.  That is not the kind of browser I'm looking for.  I'm looking
for a browser that a programmer uses when developing code.  It lets
him/her examine and modify the code.

I'm not sure if this is what you need but take a look.
http://planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=1417&lngWId=1

Yes, the Visual Studio.NET "browser" (which I'll call IDE from here
on) is not as powerful as what you are looking for, but it does
support part of what you want: the browsing of classes, methods, etc.,
in a hierarchical view.

The default view of your code structure is the "Solution Explorer"
view, which shows the files and projects in your solution. What you
want to do is switch to class view. You can access this by clicking
the "View" menu at the top, and then clicking on "Class View". You
should also see tabs below these views which give you a quick way to
switch between Solution Explorer and Class View.

In the Class View, you can drill down through the hierarchy of all
your classes. You can double-click any item (or right-click and choose
"Go to Definition") to open the source code file at the point where
that item is declared/defined.

In C# projects, there is also a "Go to Reference" choice when you
right-click, which takes you to the first place that references (i.e.
makes a call to or makes use of) the chosen item. You can use CTRL +
SHIFT + 1 to cycle to the next found reference(s) and CTRL + SHIFT + 2
to move back to the previous one. Unfortunately, for some unknown
reason, this "Go to Reference" feature does not appear in the IDE when
your project is a VB.NET project. It seems to be a C#-only feature.

Also unfortunate for you is that there *are* 3rd party tools for doing
exactly what you want and much more, but they are only for C#. Two
well-known tools are Resharper (http://www.jetbrains.net/resharper)
and C# Refactory (http://www.xtreme-simplicity.net/CSharpRefactory.html).
Resharper is planning to add support for VB.NET in the very near
future, so keep an eye out for that.

Or you might want to consider switching to C#, if your current
situation allows you to, if you want these features now.