Where I work we use Visual Studio for the development of our main product application as well as various web and support applications. As these developments rely on a number of MS and third party controls the code is pretty tied to Visual Studio as an editing environment and editing it in another tool generaly breaks stuff. (The other developers don't like that!)
So here's my problem (and the reason Visual studio sucks…). It's a tool for developers, and I mean ONLY developers! Microsoft in there infinate FrontPage induced wisdom decided to include a "Design" view… erm, no… design view it ain't! Now I understand it would be harder to market if they called it what it was… a "useless misrepresentitive F$#@ up your code" view but that's exactly what it is! I mean seriously…
First let me make it clear, I'm a web developer, so we're talking ASP.NET here… Visual studio may do an admirable job with Windows forms (note I say "may") but I don't care, it does a piss poor job with ASP.NET so why try? So far, and I'm damn sure there's more, Visual Studio's "Design" view has reformatted/rewritten large chunks of my standards compliant code, changed lower case tags to upper case and get this… removed closing tags! WTF!!! The result? It actually breaks things!
Problem is, and I have looked, I can't seem to find any kind of configuration setting that will prevent it from doing all of this. I know I know… don't use design view… well I don't! but other developers who occationally work with my code DO! And that's not the point… if it doesn't work it shouldn't be there!
Having come from a graphic/web design background I have used Macromedia Dreamweaver, since about version 2 and although it has been an offender itself in the past it has matured into a very capable editor that has some real smarts and know's when to leave your code alone! It's handy to have a design view that works… including the ability to include live dynamic data in pages during editing and view fully representative CSS layout. That said, I rarely use the WYSIWYG design view, preferring to write my own code but at least I know it won't destroy hours of my work at the press of a button!
Having looked into the problem a little however, it seems there is no easy way to work in any other application so long as the primary development environment is Visual Studio so for now I guess I'm stuck with it. So if anyone can shed any light on this or offer up viable solutions please feel free to comment.
Roll on Visual Studio 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0… and Microsoft… PLEASE get it right this time!
About Simon
Ouch. I feel your pain. I always set default view to open as code, not design for precisely this reason – but as you say, that doensn't solve the problem where another developer (who hasn't made this setting) opens the file. Grrr
Visual Studio 2005 has made big strides in the ASP.NET design experience. It will no longer reformat your HTML when you switch between design and source view (yeah), and its html source editor is really top notch (I believe richer than anything else out there on the market).
The markup generated by default is now XHTML transitional compliant, and the intellisense engine now validates all markup for you dynamically (also as XHTML transitional by default — although you can also change this to xhtml strict and html 4.01).
You can learn more and download the free Visual Web Developer 2005 (which is the express edition of Visual Studio) from this link: http://www.asp.net/default.aspx?tabindex=7&tabid=46
Hope this helps,
Thanks Scott
Didn't expect to receive feedback from so high up in the food chain! but very much appreciated. I will be sure to check out both the Visual Studio Web Developer 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 products as we will most probably be moving toward .Net 2.0 with the forthcoming 4.0 release of our AfterMail product.
It's time to start *really* worrying about a product when it gets to 4.0 within two years, while still taking an approach that was out of date in 1999!
Bye bye Aftermail, sorry you couldn't catch up in time.
Care to qualify that comment Cynic? I would be very interested to here your reasoning for why AfterMail are out of date in their approach.
I have to disagree however, with the notion that reaching a 4.0 version of a product in a two year timeframe is at all worrying. I would infact see this as a good thing as it show's the product is growing rapidly in response to an emerging, ever changing and very real need in the marketplace.
And for the record AfterMail are in the 3.5 release cycle NOT 4.0. As such this is a refinement of the 3.0 product, not a full version evolution.
Funny how people who leave unqualified and senseless comments like that always seem to do it anonymously. If he had some valid concerns it would be of much more value to everyone to discuss them openly with integrity. Must have been a competitor firing a badly executed cheap shot