Make it so that opening a simple text file from Explorer is fast. It's just Text. Make it so fast to open that I no longer need a notepad replacement.
Make VS2011 into the best notepad replacement!!

It's just text, after all. It's ALL text.

In 2005 there was VBScript support, and the general consensus is that PowerShell is the wave of the future for scripting. Why can't it be brought into VS as a supported language with IntelliSense? It seems like the wheel was reinvented when the PowerShell ISE was developed when it can also be done in VS.

The VS2010 Productivity Power Tools had a ctrl-click go to definition feature. This was great and could be an easy option to add (does not need to be on by default).

Markdown is known as best idea for project text files. For example most README files novadays are written in markdown.

Also default README.md could be possible added to project templates.

To get more details visit Markdown specs page http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/.

When searching for a string in a project's source code, I often find myself wasting time examining lines that have been commented out. it would be useful to offer an option to return only lines that are not commented out, so as not to confuse the results.

I wish it were possible to define per-project editor settings that affect formatting and writing style: tab size, use tabs/spaces, autoindent and so on.

Because, different solutions (or even projects in one solution) can have different coding styles or conventions.

Having to poke in several tabs of environment settings every time as I switch projects is a major annoyance.

Actually the formatting settings are not private user preferences; they are part of a project and should be stored in source sontrol, so that the next person that takes on the code automatically gets the proper settings.

I suggest you automatically close parenthesis

Currently code construction flow is frequently disrupted as users must fight the editor over auto-indent decisions which violate their preferences.

Disabling auto-indention altogether is a clumsy "solution", as (for instance) those auto-indent decisions which facilitate hierarchical code block structure may bring more efficiency to code construction than others take away.

We need an interface in the IDE to configure each individual auto-indention decision.

Bake the Code Contracts Editor Extension into Visual Studio, with less bugs, better performance and more features.

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/85f0aa38-a8a8-4811-8b86-e7f0b8d8c71b

The VS editor should support italics for syntax highlighting.
Why bold, but not italics?

Other IDEs have local history tracking. It's really useful for when something is almost right, but not ready to commit. Then a couple changes are made to try and finish it up. Turns out those changes make it worse. Depending on how big those changes were and how many files you touched it can be a nightmare. Local history makes it easy to rewind. This is especially useful for css/javascript where a small change can have a large impact.

The editor already highlights matching braces, but if one of the pairs is not visible in the editor, then this visually indicator is not useful.

My suggestions, is to add a tooltip what would show the (previous) line when the matching brace started when the mouse is hovering the ending brace.

if(testSomething)
{
// Very Long Code
}

In this case, hovering the mouse over the ending curly brace, would show a tooltip with "if(testSomething)" text.

This would be especially useful in dealing with long trailing } sequences at the end of functions and classes.

Oftentimes when searching and/or replacing in code, the text I'm searching for exists in both code and comments. An option to exclude comments from search results would save a lot of time.

Allow us to pick a pattern of choice, and then have the IDE help us fall into the pit of success by supporting that pattern. So something like replacing the current code behind model with a plug-in'able/replaceable model, with MVVM being just one such model. If "code behind" is bad, then let the IDE help us by implementing a given pattern and not force use to jump through hoops to implement them. WPF/Silverlight/xaml's awesome databinding is the first step, now let's improve that by making the IDE "understand" a pattern of choice, like MVVM

There doesn't appear to be a way to turn off the auto formatting in CSS files. I'm sure that in VS2010 my most hit, non-alphanumeric key was the semi-colon, in VS2012 it's backspace 2012 tends to put in spaces and line breaks automatically. I prefer to wrtie my CSS files to be ultra-condensed to begin with. It would be great if there was a "disable auto formatting/auto completion check box for CSS files.