Visual Web Developer 2005 Express

mewso

Thought I'd mention that this has been released free by Microsoft as of Monday. I don't know how many asp.net developers are out there but this is an excellent move forward from a web application development pov imho. Get it on www.asp.net

seamus

I got this on a cover disk some time back, but I remember it reminded me a bit too much of FrontPage. Or am I actually thinking about FrontPage?

ButtermilkJack

Is this a full web development application (like Dreamweaver etc)? Built-in FTP is well handy!

mewso

seamus wrote:

I got this on a cover disk some time back, but I remember it reminded me a bit too much of FrontPage. Or am I actually thinking about FrontPage?

The version you had was a beta. The final release is out now. It is most certainly not Frontpage It is a complete package for development of a website. Obviously it is more geared towards backend development than say design but it's not just this development software thats important it's version 2 of the framework. For those who don't know one of the original selling points of asp.net was the idea of webcontrols. For example a datagrid for displaying database data which renders a table with the data for you so the old way of looping through the records and outputting custom html to the page becomes unecessary. All web controls render as html they just present a more feature rich way of achieving common tasks. Features of this new version of asp.net:-

Masterpages - create a masterpage to template your site. asp.net pages have a masterpage property and when used they use the masterpage as the template and the page only needs to contain the content for that page. In code you can change masterpages on the fly.
Standards validation - set your page to validate against xhtml transitional, frameset or strict and accessability. Web controls render valid standards compliant xhtml and accessible tags.
Gridview and Datasources - drag a sqldatasource onto your page set the connection properties, create a sql query, get it to create update, delete and insert statements or procedures based on the select. Drag a gridview onto the page. Set it's datasource to the sqldatasource, tick allow editing, tick allow deleting and tick allow sorting. Open the web page in a browser and see that in a matter of minutes you have created a table of database data which can be edited, deleted and sorted by the user. No code required.
Themes - create themes (styles/icons etc.) and assign to different elements on your page. Create a second theme and apply it on the fly.
Navigation - Dynamic Menu/Treeview/breadcrumb controls. Drag them onto your page, create an xml representation of your site and the menu and treeview will use it to display links etc. automatically.
Built in User System - Every site you create has an administration section where you can use the built in user model to create/edit users. Then specify the protected pages and permissions etc. Drag and drop a login control or a login status control or a password recovery control onto you page whic by default tap into this user model.
OOP - Overide/implement/extend the navigation provider model to use a different source to the xml file, sql server for example. Overide the user model to use your custom user setup and the login controls will use it painlessly.

I'm a bit enthusiastic about it as you can see. Many folks will point blank not use .net because it's the much hated MS but as far as I'm concerned if Satan offered me this easy a method to develop dynamic data driven websites then I would be wrapping my soul with a bow. Of course nothings perfect but if somethings good it's good.

rsynnott

They seem to have fixed the needless use of weird javascript postback things for links....

mewso

Are you sure. I would imagine they would still need it for linkbutton. Hardly needless if they need to capture events from different linkbuttons/button.

rsynnott

musician wrote:

Are you sure. I would imagine they would still need it for linkbutton. Hardly needless if they need to capture events from different linkbuttons/button.

Almost anything that CAN be done with GET and doesn't contain sensitive information SHOULD be done with GET; POST breaks expected browser behaviour when clicking 'back'.

I was referring specifically, tho, to an issue where one of the data display controls would use POST for its "next" and "previous" links.

mewso

I see. I agree with you I use GET for almost everything. I'm just saying that the javscript serves a purpose for that particular control whether we use it or not.