So as everyone knows by now, VS2005, VSS2005 and SQL2005 has been out on MSDN since Thursday(?) of last week. I installed it and starting playing with it today. I have been testing from my current work perspective (ASP.NET with VB, ick... I wish it was C#, but oh well, I've got to get paid). Here are a few points of contention that I've found.
- Page Compilation: As far back as I can remember, we were told that the default compilation model for VS 2005 was going to be IN-LINE. VS2005 Help / MSDN Library calls it the Single-File model; and we were told that the script block will be hidden from the HTML view. Well, turns out that that is COMPLETELY FALSE. First of all the default is still code-behind. In fact, I haven't even found where you can change the default model. You can remove the codebehind attribute from the page directive and delete the code behind file... perhaps even change the web form template - but you can't change the default compilation model. This isn't really a problem as you can compile individual pages without recompiling the whole site... but is is a change to what we were told. In the past I've used the code-behind model, but I had already become resigned to switching to in-line. I even figured that this was required to meet the 70% reduction in code claim. Don't spend an hour trying to figure this all out like I did, just use the code-behind model. Update (11/6/2005): I missed something. Apparently there is a check box in the new web form dialog that allows you to turn off the code-behind; the ASPX is then created using the single-file model. I still don't know any way to do it project wide (like in the web.config).
- GridView: Wow. I'm just as blown away by GridView that I was with DataGrid. I'm also just as annoyed. Back when I went to the C# Summercamp (week-long training with C#) in 2002 with DevelopMentor at the Microsoft Redmond campus, I immediately wanted to modify the DataGrid wizard to add sorting and paging. GridView gives us one-click access to sorting and paging, but implements sorting in a bonehead way. Sure you can sort / reverse sort on all of the non-command columns, but you get no indication of what column is sorted or which way it is sorted Ascending or Descending. I hope I can override the GridView_Sort method (the same way we did with ASP.NET 1.0) to give the end user a sort direction indicator.
- SQL Express: My coworker tried to figure out how to connect to SQLExpress, but a connection to the database through VS IDE quickly failed. He want off on a tangent to find the SQLExpress workbench/manager... but quickly found that the last version doesn't work with the RTM of SQLExpress. I was sure you could do it from the IDE but quickly failed as well. The error indicated that the named pipe wasn't available. So I poked around the SQLExpress shortcuts in the start menu and pulled up services. I'm not sure which item fixed it, but the changes I made included 1) Start the SQL Browser service, and 2) Enable Named Pipes. Once I did these, I saw a server in my create database dialog: "/SQLEXPRESS". Bingo. You're welcome. ;-)
- SiteMapPath: This is pretty cool, but if you drag and drop the control and run the page you will receive the error that a SiteMapSource needs to be defined. A quick look at the MSDN Library shows that you merely need to create a SiteMap (in XML). This is really easy to do, just add a new item to the website, select SiteMap and a SiteMap.config file will be added to your site. This XML file is self explanatory and near as I can tell only requires that you don't have the same URL mentioned twice. You don't need to set the SiteMapSource... apparently the SiteMap.config is the default source.
Next I'll be looking at MasterPages and control skinning...