This week I had to make some changes to an application written in Visual Studio 2003 (It's a Microsoft Content Management Server application, but that is irrelevant to the memories). After digging through multiple user controls I found the one that needed a change. The change was simple, remove a control. Two seconds ... right? WRONG... 2 hours later... I could not figure out why deleting a control caused the layout of the page to explode and text to journey into new locations on the page. Here are "some" of the things I tried during that 2 hour trip back in time.
- Perhaps the control was occupying space that impacted the layout of the page. Put the control back - nope.
- Get the latest version of the source code (again)
- Everything works as expected
- Change the visible property of the control to false and let it continue to live on the page - nope
- Change the visilbe property back to true - nope (Now this is strange)
- Get the latest version (again)
- Everything works as expected
- Just for kicks, leave the control alone and change the border of the table from 0 to 1 - nope
- Wow - why does the layout change with a border change?
- I remember how much I hated some "features" of Visual Studio 2003, especially the one that updated the HTML .. ah ha!
- Get latest version (again)
- Delete the control in HTML view - Save - DO NOT SWITCH TO DESIGN VIEW
- SUCCESS!
Memories quickly reminded me how much better Visual Studio 2005 is than Visual Studio 2003. It's time to check out the improvements I'm sure to find in Visual Studio 2008.