Visual Studio 2003 productivity tips - asp.net

I have been using Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 for a long time now, but now I'm consulting somewhere that has all ASP.NET 1.1 apps, so I need to use Visual Studio 2003.
Can anyone recommend some good add-ins, settings, general tips, etc when using VS2003 to make it a little more like...well...VS2008?
Note: I've heard about MSBee, but VS2005/8 is not an option. Also note that I have installed ReSharper for Vs2003 already.
Update: Some specifc things I like about 2005/2008 that aren't present in 2003 (at least as far as I can tell):
Intellisense doesn't popup immediately...i.e. I have to type "this." or "SomeNamespace." before I get any intellisense
Little things like when I type in runat=" and then intellisense gives me server, but doesn't give me the closing quote. There are a lot of little frustrations like that.
I don't use the "designer", so it's annoying to have to type in all the protected properties for the controls. It would be nice if that was done automatically somehow.
Just stuff like that, or any other hints/tricks that I haven't thought of...? Sorry if this is a bit vague.

I highly recommend Visual Assist for any version of VS.
There are some books, e.g. Mastering Visual Studio .NET and many suggestions common
to all versions of Visual Studio (like learning the key board shortcuts, mastering the command console, ...). But if you are already experienced with newer versions of VS, I doubt they will benefit you much.
Many plugins exist for VS 2003, e.g. MZ-Tools and
Kingstools. MSDN Magazine has
a list of Ten Must-Have Tools Every Developer Should Download Now. I think you have tell us which feature specifically you
are missing in VS2003. Then we might be able recommend a solution
which makes VS2003 more like VS2008 in that respect.

I'd start with this link - getting a handle on keyboard shortcuts is always a big productivity boost for me.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/files/Visual%20Studio%20.NET%202003%20Keyboard%20Shortcuts.htm

I like to have "Solution command prompt" and "Solution explorer window" bound to keyboard shortcuts. Just configured two external tools (Tools -> External Tools...)
Command: cmd.exe Initial Directory: $(ProjectDir)
Command: explorer.exe Arguments: - /E,/Root,"$(SolutionDir)"
Then you can bind these (i have them bound to Alt-E and Alt-C) in the Tools -> Customize... -> Keyboard... menu. You want to look for the "Tools.ExternalCommand1 - 20" commands.

Related

Context menu has no "Add Scaffolding" nor "Add Controller" options

I'm trying to get started with ASP.NET/C#, and I'm doing so by following along some guides and tutorials.
One major issue I keep running into is that I have no Add Scaffolding in the context menu, nor Add Controller. I can't figure out a workaround for the lack of the Add Scaffolding.
There are various relate posts on SO. I will address some:
How to Add Controller
The accepted answer says something that directly contradicts my experience. There is no Add Controller option anywhere.
Reload the project
Reinstall suggested in this comment
I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling several versions. So far I've tried VS2013 Express for Web, VS2013 Community, and right now I'm using VS2013 Ultimate. Each one has had a fresh install installed within the month.
Add a guid
I tried adding a guid to a .proj file, an idea from another question at the moment of which I cannot find.
Same issue in Sep 2014, no answer
I realize there are several questions with the same issue, but none of the answers address my situation. Of the solutions I've seen proposed, I can't get any of them to work. Maybe I'm copying the guid's in the wrong place, maybe I'm not uninstalling correctly, I'm not sure.
I haven't yet tried to uninstall everything related to VS. I have a lot of random product on this machine. I wasn't aware that, for example, "Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Tools for Office Runtime (x64) or Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Applications 2.0 - ENU could disrupt VS2013 features. If anyone has information about this please let me know. I don't know the extent to which I would have to uninstall stuff in order to find the root of this issue. My Programs and Features menu is littered with MS product that I can barely tell apart.
EDIT:
Some Background Info:
I am using Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 Version 12.0.31101.00 Update 4, and Microsoft .NET Framework Version 4.5.50938.
I used no special install instructions.
It's a web application. File > New Project... > Installed..Templates..Visual C#..Web..ASP.NET Web Application > MVC.
Upon Dleh's suggestion, I looked for the Add > ... buttons after changing the project type. I selected File > New Project ... > Visual Studio 2012 > ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Application (.NET Framework 4.5.1) > Internet Application, and I am confused to report that there is an Add > Controller... button. I have no idea what is happening.
Also, of note, I (within the week) installed VS2013 Ultimate on my home machine, and I have having none of these issues.
I believe I have solved the issue, but I don't know exactly what I did.
One answer from here was part of what prompted me to uninstall a number of MS products and features. Unfortunately, I can't remember the exact program or feature I uninstalled.
It seems like the uninstalling of related programs and features fixed the issue. By "related programs and features" I mean anything in the Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > Programs and Features menu that had ".NET" or "Visual Studio" or "Microsoft * Web Tools" or of the like. Many of them required a system reboot after uninstalling, and after one system reboot, the desired features in VS2013 was there.
There were on the order of 20-30 MS+VS+.NET related programs, and I uninstalled about 15.
I can't remember exactly which one I uninstalled, but it was anything that look remotely old and related to VS or .NET. Even if it was recent, I always figured I could reinstall stuff if I got the wrong thing.
Hopefully, anyone going through a similar issue will find this helpful. Good luck.
Had the same issue, installing
AspNetWebTools2013_1Setup.exe
WebToolsExtensionsVS.msi
fixed it for me.
Link Here

Visual Studio Project restore old version

I am working on an ASP.NET web project in Visual Studio 2013 and it worked couple of hours before. But an hour ago I was tweaking something in the project and messed up the entire project. Is there anyway to restore to the version I had yesterday?
If you are using Version control, such as Mercurial, GIT, Subversion, TFS -- and you remembered to commit your work then YES, definitely.
If you're not using Version Control then you need to ask yourself why not? And don't turn off the computer today until you've corrected that oversight.
Also, you may have previous versions/restore points saved for you in Windows. In windows explorer, right click on the folder where your work is being saved and select properties. They may be a 'previous versions' tab, and inside there you may be able to revert to an earlier version. If so: lucky lucky you.
Also, if your work is being shared using a service like DropBox, you will be able to find earlier versions of your solution or project files.
There is one other technique, and I... I hesitate to mention this. What you need is a DeLorean car from the eighties, and enough plutonium to generate 1 point 21 GigaWatts. You also need.... forget it, no, Version Control is your best bet. Or Ctrl+Z.
Holding ctrl+z for a few minutes, and using version control are the only two ways I am aware of doing that..
In case you're like me and trying to recover from what you just did, if you saved your work to OneDrive, you can find the previous version of your work by logging into OneDrive through a web browser.
Newer versions of Visual Studio should have a "Timeline" feature that shows up in your left bar. It has probably been saving past versions of your files. But I would agree with others that using Version Control (like just committing your changes to a Github repo) is probably a smart idea!

VS 2012 RTM Intellisense Broken

This seems to be happening on a project-by-project basis. Currently I am working on an ASP.NET 4.5 Web Application Project. Intellisense was fine one day but not the next. I am using a custom project template but that should make no difference. I tried editing the text editor settings so that Auto list members and Parameter information are both checked. I tried to reset your Visual Studio settings (Tools --> Import and export settings --> Reset all settings) and I also tried the solution in the accepted answer here:
Intellisense not working
Has anyone got any insight or suggestions? Pending any answers, I've submitted a Connect bug report: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/766891/intellisense-broken-in-vs-2012-rtm
You may be able to refresh Intellisense cache with Ctrl + Shift + R (on standard shortcut keys)
I've had the same issue on VS2010 and fixed it another method described at How to turn IntelliSense on in Visual Studio 2010?
From the link:
Delete the files in this folder: %AppData%\Roaming\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\ReflectedSchemas (the 10.0 folder may be a different number for VS2012)
If nothing else works, you type this in the Visual Studio Command Prompt (this is in your Start menu) and hit enter: devenv /resetuserdata
This last option is documented here on MSDN, with the following disclaimer:
Disclaimer: you will lose all your environment settings and
customizations if you use this switch. It is for this reason that this
switch is not officially supported and Microsoft does not advertise
this switch to the public (you won't see this switch if you type
devenv.exe /? in the command prompt). You should only use this switch
as the last resort if you are experiencing an environment problem, and
make sure you back up your environment settings by exporting them
before using this switch.

Website running .NET 3.5 cannot use feature not part of ISO-2 specs

I am getting this error a lot:
Feature '{insert feature here}' cannot be used because it is not part of the
ISO-2 C# language specification
I am working on a .NET 3.5 website that I've worked on on and off for about two years. I've never seen this error before my most recent around of updates. I'm using a decent amount of LINQ coding throughout and I get these errors related to much of the LINQ code. Based on what I've read it seems like even though I'm using .NET 3.5, for some reason it thinks I'm using 2.0. But I can't find anything that says how to fix it.
One example of a problem is that if I try to add a new item to the App_Code directory, I do not get the option to add a LINQ to SQL dbml file.
If anyone can shed some light on how exactly I would fix this, I would much appreciate it.
I was unable to locate an "Advanced" option under the build tab. I have a feeling it is probably because it is a web app. I looked through the web.config and found 2 parts that may be important. Most things referenced 3.5.0.0 or v3.5. The settings are consistent with older backups of the web.config from when there were no errors. By the way, only intellisense and things within VS2010 are giving me problems. The website is running error free.
I have completed a total uninstall and re-install of VS2010 and I'm still having the same issue. I fired up my old install of VS2008 and I am NOT having this issue there. However, I would MUCH prefer to use VS2010 on this project.
I opened the website in VS2010 on my work computer, and there are no errors reported. This is making me think that there is something on my laptop that is causing the problem. As I noted above, I completely reinstalled Visual Studio 2010 and I am still having the problem. What does this leave? I have only one extension installed in VS, and it's the same one at work and on my laptop. Also, I did not reinstall the extension after reinstalling VS, and the problem persists.
Both PC's run Win7 Ultimate. Have VS2008 and VS2010 installed. VS2010 has the same extension installed on both. On my laptop I have the full version of SQL Server 2008 installed, but only the Management Studio on my desktop (we have a server in the office). Would SS2008 have anything to do with it?
Go to your project properties, the Build tab, Advanced - that should allow you to set which version of C# you want to use. It should default to the latest version supported by the version of Visual Studio you're using, but it sounds like at some point you've switched it to ISO-2.
(That's certainly true for Windows projects and class libraries - there may be a different location in a web app. In particular, have a look in Web.config.)
If this has only started happening recently, I'd have a look through your source control history at changes to any configuration files. Also try creating a new project of the same type, and see if that has the same problem.
Jon Skeet's answer is mostly correct. The location for the update is in the "Property Pages" which I got to by right-clicking on the name of the website, clicking Property Pages, the Build item, then target framework.
The extension I use, Solution Navigator, has it's own heading for the solution. Right-clicking on it DOES NOT give me the Property Pages option. By chance I right clicked on the title of the website under the solution heading and was presented with the Property Pages option. In there was the Build tab which contained the target framework option.
Once I finally found the target framework option, it was indeed set to .NET 2.0 for some reason. I changed it to 3.5, reloaded the solution, and now it works great.
Thanks a million Jon for your help and time working with me!!

Visual Studio 2010 hangs when starting asp.net site debugging

i have problem with Visual Studio 2010 on Windows 7 x64. When i started asp.net site debugging, it stoped working. Only solution is restarting IIS.
Have anyone experiences with this?
Thanks
As Peter mentioned, manually attaching through the Attach to Process dialog should work.
Another option is to temporarily update your project to .NET Framework v4.0. In the IDE, this can be done in 'Build' section of under project properties.
We are still investigating the issue to find a longer term solution.
Sorry for the inconvenience that this problem has caused.
This M$ Connect article points straight to the topic: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/556000/vs-2010-hangs-when-debugging-asp-net-3-5-web-application-or-website
Apart from the different intermediate solutions proposed, there seems to be an official Microsoft VS 2010 HotFix available here: http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/KB2106584/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=4834.
HTH
Here's a workaround that helped me:
Go to Debug->Attach to Process. If the 'Attach To' box says 'Automatic: Native code' then click the 'Select...' button. In the 'Select Code Type' dialog change the option from 'Automatically determine the type of code to debug' to 'Debug these code types' and choose ONLY the options for you project. For me this was 'Managed (v2.0, v1.1, v1.0)'. Click OK. Then click Cancel in the 'Attach to Process' dialog.
At this point I'm now able to do F5 Debugging.
I hope this helps!
For what it is worth I had this problem this morning out of nowhere. In my case I am converting a database into webpages and one of the folders of one of the projects in my solution now has over 200 thousand html web pages. As soon as I one off'd my solution and removed the project with the giant folder debugging worked again.
This is not unlike what happens when performing a global search and vs 2010 tries to search a folder with an enormous # of files.

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