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Jon Box Blog

VS2005: Designer or Markup View

Back in November when Jerry Dixon was presenting the VS2005 launch at the Memphis .NET User Group meeting, I gave him a hard time publicly at one point for doing most of the demo's from in the Markup View.  I thought that this was not very informative to those not familiar with the new features.  This is also contributed to by my preference in VS2003 to living in the Designer.


But after spending some real time in VS doing ASP.NET work, my position on the preferred view has changed.  I spend a lot of time in markup, due to the capabilities of data binding.  I even have copies of code and configured controls in the toolbox that I drag directly into the markup view.  I just wished that Snippets worked in the Markup view.  I also wish that wizards could be launched from this view - for example the Configure Data Source wizard and the Tasks options for Data Bound controls.  That would save me a little time and some clicks.


Another new thing that I grabbed onto lately is the Format Document command.  Due to hanging around more in the markup, I find myself wanting the markup to stay properly indented so it is easy to read - so I press Ctrl-K,Ctrl-X all the time.  I've even gone into Tag Options (Tools | Options | Text Editor | HTML | Format | Tag Specific Options) and changed a few options to how tags are shown.


Although there might a few minor things that I would change about VS2005, there is a lot more good stuff that makes this a great release.

Jerry Dixon made this comment,
Hey Jon! Was this an apology? Are you saying that I was right? :)
comment added :: 8th January 2006, 20:20 GMT-06
Jon Box made this comment,
No, this is not an apology. I still believe that an introductory demonstration is easier to understand watching activities done in the designer. But, in real life, a lot more happens in the Markup View now.
comment added :: 12th January 2006, 09:26 GMT-06

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