Jim Buyens ... an idea for an article: Best Practices

[Jim Buyens]

I would like to second what Chris is saying. My programmer has gust got
vs.net and raves about it but I am stuck as he doesn't want to do html
formatting

Visual Studio has almost no HTML formatting options. Every time you
switch from Design view to HTML view, Visual Studio reformats your
HTML and you have no control over the rules.

and want's me to fix his final asp.net projects for browser
compatibility and some table formatting etc. Can't seem to do it very well
in FP2003 as all <aspanel.... areas are closed off in design view.

Can't find any resources on how to edit these areas in FP and am forced to
learn to use vs.net as a html editor.

Makes you appreciate FrontPage, doesn't it?

I'm not a programmer, just a FP guy. Catchy title too "Visual Studio Eye for
the FrontPage Guy" as log as Guy can be considered as girls as well.

I don't think that title would get past Microsoft's Legal department
anyway. But it does connote the purple shirt, black pleated pants,
earth shoe audience as opposed to the t-shirt, blue jeans, Nike
contingent.

Jim Buyens
Microsoft FrontPage MVP
http://www.interlacken.com
Author of:
*------------------------------------------------------*
|\----------------------------------------------------/|
|| Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 Inside Out ||
|| Microsoft FrontPage Version 2002 Inside Out ||
|| Web Database Development Step by Step .NET Edition ||
|| Troubleshooting Microsoft FrontPage 2002 ||
|| Faster Smarter Beginning Programming ||
|| (All from Microsoft Press) ||
|/----------------------------------------------------\|
*------------------------------------------------------*

 

[Jim Cheshire]

VS.NET has quite a bit of control over how code is reformatted. Tools,
Options, Text Editor, HTML/XML. There are lots of options there to control
it.

--
Jim Cheshire
Jimco Add-ins
http://www.jimcoaddins.com
===================================
Co-author of Special Edition
Using Microsoft FrontPage 2003
Order it today!
http://sefp2003.frontpagelink.com

 

[Jim Buyens]

VS.NET has quite a bit of control over how code is reformatted. Tools,
Options, Text Editor, HTML/XML. There are lots of options there to control
it.

What version are you looking at?

I'm still running 7.0 and compared to FrontPage, the HTML/XML
formatting options are quite limited.

Jim Buyens
Microsoft FrontPage MVP
http://www.interlacken.com
Author of:
*------------------------------------------------------*
|\----------------------------------------------------/|
|| Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 Inside Out ||
|| Microsoft FrontPage Version 2002 Inside Out ||
|| Web Database Development Step by Step .NET Edition ||
|| Troubleshooting Microsoft FrontPage 2002 ||
|| Faster Smarter Beginning Programming ||
|| (All from Microsoft Press) ||
|/----------------------------------------------------\|
*------------------------------------------------------*

 

[Jim Cheshire]

2002 or 2003. The options are not as detailed as FrontPage 2003, but they
are very comparable to FP2002 and earlier.

--
Jim Cheshire
Jimco Add-ins
http://www.jimcoaddins.com
===================================
Co-author of Special Edition
Using Microsoft FrontPage 2003
Order it today!
http://sefp2003.frontpagelink.com

 

[Jim Buyens]

2002 or 2003. The options are not as detailed as FrontPage 2003, but they
are very comparable to FP2002 and earlier.

Well, you don't get the individual formatting by tag name, you don't
get the round-tripping (what goes in in what goes out), and you don't
get new HTML that matches the apparent style of your existing HTML.

HTML formatting is one of the most consistent complaints I've seen
about Visual Studio. Personally, I'm no artiste' in this area, and its
a subjective judgment with no absolute right or wrong. But I think
FrontPage does a better job formatting HTML than Visual Studio.

Jim Buyens
Microsoft FrontPage MVP
http://www.interlacken.com
Author of:
*------------------------------------------------------*
|\----------------------------------------------------/|
|| Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 Inside Out ||
|| Microsoft FrontPage Version 2002 Inside Out ||
|| Web Database Development Step by Step .NET Edition ||
|| Troubleshooting Microsoft FrontPage 2002 ||
|| Faster Smarter Beginning Programming ||
|| (All from Microsoft Press) ||
|/----------------------------------------------------\|
*------------------------------------------------------*

 

[Jim Cheshire]

I agree that they are not the same options, but they are comparable to
earlier versions of FrontPage. Not identical, and not as robust, but
comparable. You're right about the individual tag formatting. Changes made
in VS.NET apply to all HTML tags.

Until FrontPage 2003, VS.NET was WAY better than FrontPage at leaving HTML
code where you put it, but both of them are using mshtml.dll to parse and
render HTML, and that library is going to bring the same pitfalls to both
applications.

Once Whidbey releases, we should see a MAJOR improvement in VS.NET's
handling of HTML. I think that probably shows promise for FrontPage being
more robust as well. Maybe one day the both will meet on common ground.

--
Jim Cheshire
Jimco Add-ins
http://www.jimcoaddins.com
===================================
Co-author of Special Edition
Using Microsoft FrontPage 2003
Order it today!
http://sefp2003.frontpagelink.com

 

[Cheryl D. Wise]

I'll second that one. Everytime I try to do something in Visual Studio.NET I
want to throw the danged thing out the window (and not just MS Windows
either). I just can't get my mind wrapped around that IDE.

 

[Cheryl D. Wise]

My biggest problem with MS documentation, tutorials, training, etc. on
Visual Studio is that it is aimed at the Windows programmer. Even when I've
gone to MSDN session with ASP.NET in the title it is generally nothing to do
with what I do in the real world.

I've looked into training classes and they are all Window services oriented
and usually have familiarity with VS 6 as a pre-requisite. There are very,
very few books on Visual Studio.NET for the beginner. I'm not talking about
beginners in terms of learning code even though VB.NET is a different animal
than vbscript. I'm talking about the nuts and bolts of what is where, what a
project is, etc.

As a result even though I've had Visual Studio.NET on my systems since the
first release I don't think I have not written a single deployed ASP.NET
page in Visual Studio. I've had ASP.NET pages on live web sites for 18
months so I use ASP.NET. I either end up hand coding my aspx pages or use
competitors tools that are geared to WEB developers not programmers. These
methods have drawbacks particularly if you want to reap the full benefits of
using the .NET framework by using code behind. I like ASP.NET but tend to
use classic asp more because of the difficulty I have in using VS.

I think Jim Cheshire's point about if you already know the Visual Studio IDE
you can find all the documentation on the .NET framework you want with a
little work. If you don't know the IDE all that info is of little value.

I would not be scared off by a straight VS book if it were geared strictly
towards web developers. I suspect that I am not your typical user anymore
than you are.

Personal opinion here but I think to be successful it would need to have
detailed information on the VS interface with a lot of how-tos and screen
shots. Followed by a bunch of typical web apps, event calendars, forms
processing, database stuff beyond what you can easily do in FrontPage.

FWIW, I like the title you came up with. <grin />

 

[Jim Cheshire]

I'm not sure this is possible without severely diluting the technology.
ASP.NET is completely unlike any other Web development technology. It is
much more programmatically intensive, and unlike traditional ASP, ASP.NET
(to do it right) requires some pretty strong programming skills.

I don't think that VS.NET is targeted towards people who have never been
developers. In fact, I think that taking on the .NET Framework,
object-oriented programming, and VS.NET is a huge task for a non-programmer.
I don't think it's necessarily because of the lack of documentation. I
think it is more due to the fact that it takes years for programmers to
learn how to effectively code in an object-oriented manner, and adding the
..NET Framework on top of that makes it overwhelming for many
non-programmers.

--
Jim Cheshire
Jimco Add-ins
http://www.jimcoaddins.com
===================================
Co-author of Special Edition
Using Microsoft FrontPage 2003
Order it today!
http://sefp2003.frontpagelink.com

 

[Cheryl D. Wise]

We'll have to agree to disagree then. I do not consider myself a programmer
and never intend to do more than web programming. I have never had any
object oriented programming language training but I have been able to write
and put into production VB.NET code. Strange as it may seem I had less
trouble than my partner is a long time VB programmer in adapting to the
object oriented mode.

Just a general observation from the user group I teach at, the people who
have been using Visual Basic for years seem to have more difficulty with
VB.NET than those who have never written a single line of server side code.

Documentation on the .NET Framework is easy enough to find. It is
documentation on using Visual Studio.NET from a beginner's perspective that
I have had trouble locating. In class I have taken people who have never
written a line of code and have them successfully sending email using
ASP.NET in 30-60 minutes using notepad. Yet I have never been able to
successful write a single ASP.NET page in Visual Studio.NET. Despite that I
handicap I have had sites up on production servers for over 18 months
running ASP.NET using VB.NET for event calendars, datagrids, editable
datagrids and other dynamically generated pages.

I will admit that it isn't coded in the most effective manner but it works,
runs well and loads quickly. A true programmer might think my code less than
elegant but writing code behind without understanding Visual Studio.NET is
not likely to happen.