C
CMM
Do the developers of Visual 2005 actuall use it??? There's lots of great
things in VS2005 (mostly related to the outstanding work done on the CLR)...
but in general the LITTLE THINGS totally drag it down.. especially the
slightly-improved-but-not-all-that-much IDE. I waited for 3 years for this?
Who's in charge of this mess?
1)
Editing a web form in the designer... I think I'm totally misunderstanding
the usage of CSS stylesheets and classes. Why can't I pick from a CSS style
in the CssClass property in the property window? I can manually enter a
style and it'll work... but there's no "dropdown" to select one. I have to
remember the names of all the styles in my stylesheet? That's not very
helpful. Am I doing something wrong?
2)
Also, CSS styles in the linked stylesheet also don't show up in the "Block
Format" dropdown in the toolbar. I think they should... am I wrong?
Furthermore, why can't I link (via the Property Editor) to multiple
stylesheets. HTML supports this and it is used often... why doesn't the
designer support this? I know I can drop to the source editor and add them
to the HEAD section manually but this is also not very helpful in the grand
scheme of things. No wonder Visual Studio 2005 defaults to showing you the
source HTML/ASP tags.... because it's visual web form editor plain sucks.
3)
Why doesn't the ClassKey property in the Expressions window show resource
files that are in App_GlobalResources??? You have to manually type in the
name of the resource file. Not only that, but even if you type in the name
of the resource file, you still have to manually give it the the name of the
resourse string!!!???? Why no dropdown? Not only that, but if you go back
into it, then a list of resource keys DO show up? Amazing! This is a flat
out bug... not a missing feature or a misunderstanding of the developer's
intent. Whatever programmer was in charge of this feature simply went to
sleep on it.
I understand that it works better if you have a resource file for EACH web
form... because then the Expressions Editor doesn't act so STUPID. But, this
is unnacceptable. The implementation of Globalization via Resource files in
the ASP Web Forms designer is HORRID.
4)
Is it me or does intellisense behave weird in the Immediate Window? When I'm
in debug mode and I go to the Immediate window and type ? System. no
intellisense after the period! But if I hit enter after typeing ? system (I
get an error of course) but then after that typing ? System. does trigger
intellisense and I'm shown all the stuff in the System namespace. Huh?
5)
F1 is unpredictable. It doesn't work from the immediate window It doesn't
really work from the Property Editor. It works OK from source code... but
then it gets confused if you have nested parethesis and such. It took me
forever to realize that I should NOT select an entire word and hit F1...
that this instead does a "generic" search instead of the actual TYPE of the
variable or keyword selected. Not highligting the word does cause F1 to
behave as you would expect and it zeroes in exactly on the keyword or
function it should in the Help files. I don't dislike this behavior... but,
I was confused by it at first.
6)
Don't even get me started on why VS2005 INSISTS on creating an EMPTY UNUSED
subfolder every time it starts in my My Documents folder even though I have
changed all its paths elsewhere.
7)
Import/Export settings is a cool idea (actually stolen from good ol' Visual
Interdev about 7 years late). But badly implemented. I would prefer to see a
drop down or menu somewhere where I can easily change "Environment Settings"
without worrying about saving, switching around physical files, or playing
musical chairs. Something like View | Environment -> C#, VB, Custom, Define
Views (similar to the way Outlook does "Views.")
things in VS2005 (mostly related to the outstanding work done on the CLR)...
but in general the LITTLE THINGS totally drag it down.. especially the
slightly-improved-but-not-all-that-much IDE. I waited for 3 years for this?
Who's in charge of this mess?
1)
Editing a web form in the designer... I think I'm totally misunderstanding
the usage of CSS stylesheets and classes. Why can't I pick from a CSS style
in the CssClass property in the property window? I can manually enter a
style and it'll work... but there's no "dropdown" to select one. I have to
remember the names of all the styles in my stylesheet? That's not very
helpful. Am I doing something wrong?
2)
Also, CSS styles in the linked stylesheet also don't show up in the "Block
Format" dropdown in the toolbar. I think they should... am I wrong?
Furthermore, why can't I link (via the Property Editor) to multiple
stylesheets. HTML supports this and it is used often... why doesn't the
designer support this? I know I can drop to the source editor and add them
to the HEAD section manually but this is also not very helpful in the grand
scheme of things. No wonder Visual Studio 2005 defaults to showing you the
source HTML/ASP tags.... because it's visual web form editor plain sucks.
3)
Why doesn't the ClassKey property in the Expressions window show resource
files that are in App_GlobalResources??? You have to manually type in the
name of the resource file. Not only that, but even if you type in the name
of the resource file, you still have to manually give it the the name of the
resourse string!!!???? Why no dropdown? Not only that, but if you go back
into it, then a list of resource keys DO show up? Amazing! This is a flat
out bug... not a missing feature or a misunderstanding of the developer's
intent. Whatever programmer was in charge of this feature simply went to
sleep on it.
I understand that it works better if you have a resource file for EACH web
form... because then the Expressions Editor doesn't act so STUPID. But, this
is unnacceptable. The implementation of Globalization via Resource files in
the ASP Web Forms designer is HORRID.
4)
Is it me or does intellisense behave weird in the Immediate Window? When I'm
in debug mode and I go to the Immediate window and type ? System. no
intellisense after the period! But if I hit enter after typeing ? system (I
get an error of course) but then after that typing ? System. does trigger
intellisense and I'm shown all the stuff in the System namespace. Huh?
5)
F1 is unpredictable. It doesn't work from the immediate window It doesn't
really work from the Property Editor. It works OK from source code... but
then it gets confused if you have nested parethesis and such. It took me
forever to realize that I should NOT select an entire word and hit F1...
that this instead does a "generic" search instead of the actual TYPE of the
variable or keyword selected. Not highligting the word does cause F1 to
behave as you would expect and it zeroes in exactly on the keyword or
function it should in the Help files. I don't dislike this behavior... but,
I was confused by it at first.
6)
Don't even get me started on why VS2005 INSISTS on creating an EMPTY UNUSED
subfolder every time it starts in my My Documents folder even though I have
changed all its paths elsewhere.
7)
Import/Export settings is a cool idea (actually stolen from good ol' Visual
Interdev about 7 years late). But badly implemented. I would prefer to see a
drop down or menu somewhere where I can easily change "Environment Settings"
without worrying about saving, switching around physical files, or playing
musical chairs. Something like View | Environment -> C#, VB, Custom, Define
Views (similar to the way Outlook does "Views.")
