Downloadable Hotfix: Performance and Editor fixes for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Web Developer Express 2008
We have received a great deal of feedback on VS 2008 and VWD 2008. Thank you for all the feedback.
We have looked at the feedback carefully and selected some critical issues around performance and editor usage to fix in this hotfix. This article talks about all the issues that are fixed in the hotfix.
Machine Prerequisites:
1. Install Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Web Developer Express 2008.
2. Close all instances of Visual Studio or VWD express before installing the patch. If the product is open while the hotfix is installed, it can cause a variety of problems as certain components may not update properly.
Download instructions:
https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=10826
Supported Languages:
This hotfix currently supports all languages except POR (Portuguese) and RUS (Russian). Note that the description still says ‘ENU’ although it is an ‘all-lang’ package. Due to some limitations on the connect website we were not able to change the description for already published hotfixes. We are working with the team that owns connect site to fix it.
Issues that are fixed: We have fixed several bugs in this hotfix. All bug fixes are listed below.
HTML Source view performance
- Source editor freezes for a few seconds when typing in a page with a custom control that has more than two levels of sub-properties.
- “View Code” right-click context menu command takes a long time to appear with web application projects.
- Visual Studio has very slow behavior when opening large HTML documents.
- Visual Studio has responsiveness issues when working with big HTML files with certain markup.
- The Tab/Shift-Tab (Indent/Un-indent) operation is slow with large HTML selections.
Design view performance
- Slow typing in design view with certain page markup configurations.
HTML editing
- Quotes are not inserted after Class or CssClass attribute even when the option is enabled.
- Visual Studio crashes when ServiceReference element points back to the current web page.
JavaScript editing
- When opening a JavaScript file, colorization of the client script is sometimes delayed several seconds.
- JavaScript Intellisense does not work if an empty string property is encountered before the current line of editing.
Web Site build performance
- Build is very slow when Bin folder contains large number of assemblies and .refresh files with web-site projects.
Install/uninstall information:
Install:
Ø Close all instances of VS before installing the product.
Ø Click on the ‘Download’ link.
Ø Copy the hotfix to a known directory.
Ø Run the hotfix executable (Right click and choose 'Run as a administrator' in Vista)
Ø Click on the ‘Run’ button when ‘Unknown Publisher’ security warning dialog pops up.
Ø Click on ‘Continue’ when the Microsoft Self-Extractor dialog pops up
Ø Click OK to extract the files to default location (C:\).
Ø If you don't run as an administrator in Vista, you will get the following error message If 'C:\' happens to be your %SystemDrive%
Ø 
Ø This is because the default path is set to %SystemDrive%. Change the extraction path to another location where the you can write and that should fix the problem.
Ø Choose default options for the remaining part of the setup.
Ø To verify patch installed correctly:
a) Launch VS 2008.
b) Go to Help -> About dialog
c) Looking for an entry that says ‘Hotfix for Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite – ENU (KB946581)’. You will see this exact text in VS Team Suite SKU but if you are using PRO or STD then the entry will be little bit different. You are good to go if the KB article number is correct.
Ø To verify product bits copied correctly: Check the time stamp on the following files to make sure that it says Feb, 1st 2008.
a) Common7\IDE\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.dll
b) Common7\Packages\htmled.dll
c) Common7\Packages\mswebprj.dll
Uninstall:
Ø Go to Control Panel -> Add/ Remove programs.
Ø Check the “Show Updates” checkbox.
Ø Select “Hotfix for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 – KB946581” under Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and click “Remove”. (or)
Ø Select “Hotfix for Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition – KB946581 and click “Remove”
Vinaya Reddy
Visual Studio Web Tools
