A few questions about the VS IDE and ASP.NET...

[cbvbguy]

What, exactly, does the Visual Studio.NET IDE offer for ASP.NET developers? It seems to me that the debugging only works half the time, and "compiling" your "solution" to a DLL is pointless. (Could someone explain what this DLL is?)

Is it better to just embed your ASP code in the .aspx file or to use the "codebehind" feature that Visual Studio.NET forces you to use? (Can you still debug if you don't use the codebehind?)

Also, if you have a project (or solution) and want to move it from, say, a development machine to a server, what's the best way to do this without having to edit the .webinfo file and recompiling the whole project? Is there some sort of deployment feature? Porting projects seems like such a hassle, please tell me there's an easier way to do this without ditching the IDE.

[hellswraith]

What, exactly, does the Visual Studio.NET IDE offer for ASP.NET developers? It seems to me that the debugging only works half the time, and "compiling" your "solution" to a DLL is pointless. (Could someone explain what this DLL is?)

It offers you intellisense, and debugging. Debugging works just fine for me, maybe you are trying to debug on a remote machine that won't allow you to debug. Sorry, but there is no workaround for that. No matter what you say about it, it is 10 times better at debugging than the option you had with asp 3.0!

Compiling your solution to a dll is NOT pointless. First of all, your dll will be be fully compiled to machine language as soon as you run your web app the first time. This is a HUGE speed increase compared to having your code interpreted each time by IIS, then ran.

Is it better to just embed your ASP code in the .aspx file or to use the "codebehind" feature that Visual Studio.NET forces you to use? (Can you still debug if you don't use the codebehind?)

Yes it is better because it runs faster and you have seperation of code and display (html). You can then reuse parts of your code and/or apply other object oriented features to it. Not sure if you can debug if you don't use the codebehind, never tried.

Also, if you have a project (or solution) and want to move it from, say, a development machine to a server, what's the best way to do this without having to edit the .webinfo file and recompiling the whole project? Is there some sort of deployment feature? Porting projects seems like such a hassle, please tell me there's an easier way to do this without ditching the IDE.

I just FTP it to the server, or I build the project on the server. Either way it isn't too complicated to do. I have never messed with the .webinfo file at all. Also, if you only change the .aspx code and not your code behind files, you only need to update those, not the dll. If you update any code behind files, then yes, you will need to recompile and upload the dll.

If you really can't stand the IDE, why don't you use the web matrix that you can get for free: www.asp.net

I think after using that, you will come back to the VS IDE...lol.

[cbvbguy]

hellswraith: Thanks for answering my questions. I've got one more: When I try to copy a project to another machine (or even to another folder) it gives an error when browsing to it that can only be solved by going through each ASPX file and removing the "inherits='projectname.title'" portion of the header. Know the reason for this or how I can work around it? Am I missing some crucial bit of info pertaining to moving/porting projects?

[nswan]

you need to move the 'bin' directory into you new folder as well as this contains a .dll that the asp.net pages use.

[DevGrp]

There is an easy way to copy projects. Click Projects->Copy Projects. A Dialog box will pop up, where you can copy to a computer on your network, or a different directory. It makes it that much easier.

Also if you are using xcopy for a web project, you will have to open IIS and create a virtual directory, then point that virtual directory to directory where you copied your web project.