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Visual Studio 2005 SP1 released - details about changes for web tools

As many of you may heard Visual Studio 2005 SP1 was officially released several days ago.  There have already been a couple of blog posts announcing the release from ScottGu and Soma.  One item of feedback I saw on those posts was a request for more information about the actual fixes in SP1.

I'm writing this blog post to provide more information about the SP1 fixes in the "web tools" area -- specifically those pieces of Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Web Developer 2005 Express used to target ASP.NET.  I'll also include a list of bug fixes we made to "web tools" so people can have more detail into what was fixed.  NOTE: the information here only pertains to "web tools" in Visual Studio 2005, and does not represent everything that was fixed in SP1 (there were many other bug fixes in parts of Visual Studio outside of "web tools").

If anyone out there is using Visual Studio 2005 or Visual Web Developer 2005 Express to do ASP.NET development, I highly recommend installing SP1.  With SP1 you get the following big benefits for ASP.NET development (I'll cover each in more detail below):

  1. Addition of Web Application Projects feature (note - does not apply to Visual Web Developer 2005 Express)
  2. Improvements to performance of ASP.NET features in the IDE
  3. Bug fixes to many customer reported issues
  4. Changes to enable support for ASP.NET AJAX scenarios

1. Addition of Web Applicaiton Projects

Web Application Projects is a new feature that is made available in Visual Studio 2005 SP1.  Web Application Projects uses a project-file just like Visual Studio 2003 web projects, and provides most of the same functionality available in web projects in Visual Studio 2003.  If you are converting a web project from Visual Studio 2003, Web Application Projects makes the conversion pretty much seamless.  If you would like to know more about this new feature, there is much more detailed information about Web Application Projects here.

2. Improvements to performance of ASP.NET features in the IDE

SP1 has several improvements to increase performance of the Visual Studio IDE when doing ASP.NET development. 

  • The most noticeble improvement to customers will likely be when editing ASPX pages in "source" view.  Rather than re-stating everything we've done here, I'll link instead to this great post from ScottGu describing all the things we do to make ASPX editing faster in SP1.
  • Improved IDE performance when a very large number files exist in the \bin folder of your application.
  • Improved initial loading time of built-in Visual Studio development server.
  • Fixed memory leak when using Wizard inside a View or MultiView control.
  • Open XML file with links to external files was very slow.  This has been fixed.

I also highly recommend that people read ScottGu's more general blog post about performance tuning the IDE for ASP.NET development here.

3. Bug Fixes

Below is the list of bug fixes we made in the "web tools" area in Visual Studio 2005 SP1.  Once again, please remember, these are only fixes to "web tools" and do not represent all of the fixes in SP1.

Customer bugs reported via MS Connect:

Title MS Connect Link
Incorrect CSS stylesheet warnings http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=109855
Tag elements are inserted in uppercase in a css stylesheet! http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=118815
Cannot use Help http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=118444
Cassini loads page intoSubfolder when launching from Web Site http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=218621
Rebuild Web Site Doesn't Refresh All Files http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=225952 
Pasting a large amount of text into a HTML file caused a crash... http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=106592 
VS2005 crashes when selecting Tag contents on Design view http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=109756 
typing in .htm solution items is very slow to respond http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=219978 
Format the whole document change custom attributes syntax http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=104740 
format document command corrupts casing of asp statements http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=118314 
HTML indentation cannot be turned off http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=119056 
asp' is an unrecognized tag prefix or device filter http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=104946 
Designer re-formats HTML code when using Master Page http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=110961 
Web site publish target location is not persisted http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=102857 
Error when renaming asp.net control IDs in design view http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=101997 
VS Memory Leak when a Wizard inside a View inside a MultiView http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=103420 

Other Customer reported bugs:

DTS:VSNET05 IDE crashing issue while creating/opening ASP .Net application project.
SRX060719605181: PDB/XML file in BIN still pending source control when reopen solution from source control
Large amount of files in \bin folder cause IDE performance to be slow
Performance: Add option to turn off prop grid tracking in source view
Performance not good in html editor in large files
Default scripting language in classic ASP pages is jscript
Need to HTMLEncode the category value before placed in the generated schema
IntelliSense not working in content pages for ASP.NET AJAX asp: tag prefix items
Need to HTMLEncode the category value before placed in the generated schema
Validation gets turned on automatically upon view switch with errors

Crashes reported by cusotmers (i.e. - "send error report"):

Crash Location # of Reports
DW Bucket 239321134: Crash caused by CSSPKG.DLL!CCSSCompletionSet::GetCount 14
DW Bucket 239182652: Crash caused by VSWEBDESIGN.DLL!CStyleSheet::LoadFromURL 140
DW Bucket 241786858: Crash caused by MSWEBPRJ.DLL!CVsAdviseListEnumerator<ILangFolderEvents>::GetNext 14
DW Bucket 242260654: Crash caused by MSWEBPRJ.DLL!CClientBuildManager::WaitForAppDomainResetEvent 13
DW Bucket 242424159: Crash caused by HTMLED.DLL!CTridentClientSite::IsSupported 27
DW Bucket 238744467: Crash caused by VSWEBDESIGN.DLL!CLSRenderer::BlastLineToScreen 20
DW Bucket 240078465: Crash caused by TRIDSN.DLL!CTextTracker::BeginTextHighlight 19
DW Bucket 239630140: Crash caused by VSWEBDESIGN.DLL!CBase::SubRelease 16
DW Bucket 242553048: Crash caused by VSWEBDESIGN.DLL!CTreePos::GetBranch 15
DW Bucket 335629143: Crash caused by VSWEBDESIGN.DLL!CStyleSheet::LoadFromURL 23

Bugs found during internal testing:

New Site, Ctrl-F5 intermittently raises App_Offline error
If project file is exclusively checked out, migration from VS2003 to 2005 does not yield consistent results or fail nicely
Performance: Cassini not loading assemblies as domain-neutral.
script stmt completion doesn't work against activex controls
Copy web crashes if you connect to a site that does not exist
Lots of validation errors when opening transient HTML documents for debugging
Opening the first XML file on remote web projects is really slow.
Unloading Web sites can cause P2P, MSBUILD and cassini settings to be lost
Launch file system (Cassini) web with vroot of "/" rather than web name, launch URL is http://localhost:12345/
Error VWD does not support creating web sites on a Sharepoint Extensions Enabled Web Server
Editing MDF files does not work correctly in Web Application Project after F5 or CTRL+F5

4. Changes to enable support for ASP.NET AJAX

Finally, SP1 also has some bug fixes that enable much better support for editing pages with ASP.NET AJAX syntax in Visual Studio 2005.  Specifically, it addresses issues of incorrect validation of markup in the "source" view of content pages when using ASP.NET AJAX controls.  Also, SP1 fixes scenarios where pages using ASP.NET AJAX syntax would lose formatting when switching between source and design view.

Summary

I hope the information provided here will help users get a more detailed picture of some of the things that are fixed in SP1.  I'll also re-iterate that if you are doing ASP.NET development using Visual Studio 2005, I highly recommend installing SP1.  Looking forward to your comments, cheers!

 -- Omar Khan (Group Program Manager, Web Tools Team)

Posted: Wednesday, December 20, 2006 11:50 PM by WebDevTools

Comments

sacranto said:

I am searching such a description of sp1

3x

# December 20, 2006 11:54 PM

Персональный блог Раиля Сабирова said:

нашел интересный блог команды Веб разработок Microsoft. В числе последних постов довольно подробное описание

# December 21, 2006 4:29 AM

Mani said:

Thanks, we were very curious about improvements in SP1. I specially like improved performance of Refactoring.

# December 21, 2006 7:44 AM

Brad Abrams said:

If you are an ASP.NET AJAX developer, I recommend you grab SP1 of VS2005… Not only does it include tons

# December 21, 2006 12:36 PM

Shaun Newman said:

Thanks for this post Omar.  This sort of thing is very important in my book so that companies can make a more educated decision to apply the patch.

Great job collating this all together.

# December 22, 2006 5:06 AM

Mike said:

But still no nested masterpages... Too bad, I was hoping for that one.

# December 22, 2006 9:53 AM

Dflying Chen said:

摘要本期共有7篇文章：JavaScript脚本和LINQ？VisualStudio2005SP1发布——Web相关的改进小技巧：使用VisualStudio2005SP1的本地W...

# December 22, 2006 10:33 PM

yadnesh said:

Not able to open remote sharepoint 2007 site.

Please help.

# December 28, 2006 4:40 AM

ScottGu's Blog said:

In you were out the second half of December, you might have missed some of the VS 2005 Service Pack 1

# January 1, 2007 11:24 PM

Mirror blog entries from the industry said:

In you were out the second half of December, you might have missed some of the VS 2005 Service Pack 1

# January 1, 2007 11:41 PM

Gfw said:

I installed SP1 - now the Web Application Projects fail to load - VS thinks fora few minutes and then does a quick exit - any suggestions?

# January 2, 2007 2:34 PM

Gfw said:

After reinstalling a 2nd time (it did install the first time) it started finding the projects - the PC is runninh Win XP Media Center with all updates.

# January 2, 2007 5:43 PM

TB said:

Can web site that use javascript be tested using SP1? Per MS support, VS2005's testing tools will not work with web site that use javascript.

Thanks

# January 3, 2007 11:14 PM

WebDevTools said:

Hello TB,

The testing tools in Visual Studio 2005 work with managed code (e.g. - VB / C#).  VS 2005 also has a web recorder that allows you to create automated web tests from a browser to do load testing on the server.  Specifically the JavaScript code that runs in the browser cannot be tested in an automated fashion using VS2005, however the rest of the application can still be tested in an automated manner.  Hope this helps.

# January 4, 2007 2:42 PM

Joycode@Ab110.com said:

【原文地址】 A few VS 2005 SP1 Links and Information Nuggets 【原文发表日期】 Monday, January 01, 2007 8:24 PM 如果你在12月份的下半个月出去了，你也许错过了我早先写的几篇关于VS

# January 4, 2007 2:56 PM

ASP.NET Chinese Blogs said:

【原文地址】 A few VS 2005 SP1 Links and Information Nuggets 【原文发表日期】 Monday, January 01, 2007 8:24 PM 如果你在12月份的下半个月出去了，你也许错过了我早先写的几篇关于VS

# January 13, 2007 5:50 AM

Peter Newby said:

VS2k5 with sp1 is much improved over sp0 with the WAP add-in.

Still some problems to work on.

1. The upgrade wizard is unable to cope with the XML meta tag '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="Windows-1252"?>' which is common in our vbproj files.

2. The devenv proj /upgrade process produces web site projects.  I would like a batch upgrade tools to achieve web application projects.

3. There is no command line approach to invoking the 'Convert to Web Application' wizard to move the webcontrol declarations to the design.vb file.

4. Tag registrations in the root web.config file are not respected in the designer when working on a sub-project.

5. The designer appears to have lost UI functionality for databinding to strongly typed datasets.

6. Performance problems remain when starting up, closing down, and when parsing from html view to design view.

# January 31, 2007 5:19 PM

Peter Newby said:

Point 6. On performance can be mitigated somewhat by turning off features like Tools | Options | Environment | Startup = Show Empty Environment, Environment | Help | Dynamic Help uncheck all, Debugging | Edit and Continue disable.

Point 2. Needs some refinement. devenv /upgrade on a single vbproj does produce a WAP project, but not setup as a Sub-Project in IIS as the GUI upgrade wizard now does.  Multi-project .sln conversion result in web site applications. The problem remains of having document control switches in devenv /upgrade to specify WAP and Sub-Project.  

Point 5. Confounds me.  How can the VS team pull the UI for databinding to strongly typed datasets.  Datasets are a natural interface point to external non-SQL source via XML.  They are ideal containers for passing data between web controls, business logic, and external persistence systems.  Why must I now mess around with DataSourceObjects and an artificial CRUD model when VS2003 allowed me to move hierarchical data directly to my BL and MV database, and provided a databinding UI so everyone involved does not have to master databinder.eval syntax.

See Rick Strahl's 'Simplify Data Binding In ASP.NET 2.0 With Our Custom Control' for a better design.

# February 1, 2007 3:19 PM

Peter Newby said:

These posts from Andres Aguiar dating back to Sept 2005 provide good background material for understanding those of us building hierarchical dataset based web applications.

http://weblogs.asp.net/aaguiar/articles/432695.aspx

http://weblogs.asp.net/aaguiar/archive/2005/09/19/ASP.NET-2.0-databinding_2C00_-_2700_stateful_2700_-entities-and-Atlas.aspx

We need Visual Studio to provide two-way databinding from textboxes, checkboxes, dropdownlists, grids etc to dataset elements (table["x"].rows["y"].items["z"]) in datasets with multiple level parent-child-grandchild tables where there is strong typing and relations defined on the table.  And it would be nice to keep the same aspx source code format so we don't all have to write conversion code for our existing 2003 code base.

Let us worry about scaling, persistence, database updates...

# February 5, 2007 5:40 PM

vICTor said:

Unit tests failed to run after installing VS2005 SP1.

They use full processor capacity and nothing happens anymore,they never finish.

# February 8, 2007 6:17 AM

Naysawn said:

Victor,

Sorry to hear of the issue you are encountering.  There were no significant changes that the unit test team made in SP1 and therefore it should not have affected the running of your unit tests.  Please try re-installing VS.  If the issue persists, please contact me so that we can try to resolve it.  Thanks.

# February 8, 2007 5:09 PM

Aby P Varghese said:

belive one amoung the best web development platform

# February 12, 2007 12:31 AM

Peter Newby said:

Requiring asp:TextBox and other non-IEnumerable controls to be within a FormView for supporting databinding is ugly.

UI code requirments should be focused on the user of the interface not the IDE's requirements.

I should not be forced to work in the Templated Control model in order to take advantage of databinding.

I should not be induced to organize my UI based on what controls are sourced from the same DataSourceId, but rather on what layout creates the best experience for my user.

Occam's Razor - Datasource : Control : User : Control : Datasource

# February 16, 2007 4:28 PM

Jeevan K Augustin said:

I think the Visual studio 2005 Ist SP, i mean Service Pack I.. may be missing. Please try 2 re-install the Visual Studio.

# February 28, 2007 3:57 AM

Peter Newby said:

The evisceration of the IComponent design time access which previously provided a design time bridge between WebControls and Data Access Components is absolutely shocking and devastating!

Daniel Cazzulino's postings on this are dead on.

Nikhil Kothari's pursuit of a declaritive model does not make up for the severe injury this has done to the power of IComponent and IComponent.Initialization which has been lost to those of us writing sophisticated custom ASP.NET web controls.

# February 28, 2007 6:23 PM

zalupa said:

hello world http://zalupa1.sblog.cz http://zalup.phpbbx.de http://blog.ialweb.it/pizda/

# March 1, 2007 4:28 PM

mgr said:

I still get the following error after installing sp1 for vs 2005

"Unable to open http://localhost. Visual Web Developer does not support opening Sharepoint Web Sites. See help for more details." I read in this blog that this error was fixed in sp1. What am I missing?

# March 12, 2007 8:57 AM

Matt Tester said:

Great stuff! That helps explain why I get a few errors using the ASP.NET Ajax Extensions. I was holding off installing SP1 because of bad press, etc, but now I think I should just take the 'risk'.

# April 3, 2007 8:27 PM

Jacky_xu said:

摘要

本期共有7篇文章： JavaScript脚本和LINQ？

VisualStudio2005SP1发布——Web相关的改进

小技巧：使用VisualStudio2005...

# November 1, 2007 11:06 PM

Dating said:

As many of you may heard Visual Studio 2005 SP1 was officially released several days ago. There have already been a couple of blog posts announcing the release from ScottGu and Soma . One item of feedback I saw on those posts was a request for more informatio

# May 31, 2008 1:10 AM
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