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Multiple control selection in Visual Studio 2008 SP1 RTM

We have been listening to your [strong] feedback and we are now happy to announce that multiple selection and alignment operations in Design view are coming back and will be included in VS 2008 SP1 RTM and Visual Web Developer Express 2008 SP1 RTM.

We do understand that designing pages using absolute positioning of elements is a highly controversial issue and some people have strong opinions on it. However, many users have been relying on the functionality that Visual Studio used to provide since VS 2002 and expected feature to stay in subsequent versions.

In VS 2008 we replaced old IE based designer by a new designer that is shared with Expression Web and is based on former FrontPage technologies. Unfortunately, neither FrontPage nor Expression Web ever had multiple selection functionality. (As a side note, Visual Interdev 98 didn’t have it either). Thus it took us some time to implement the feature in the new code base and it was not yet ready for SP1 Beta release.

We’d like to mention that due to time constraints, not all functionality available in VS 2005 will become available in VS 2008 SP1. Here is what will be included:

1. Multiple selection using Ctrl+Click
2. Primary selection is indicated by white tab
3. Position menu with Absolute and Relative sub items
4. Align, Make Same Size and Order menus commands.
5. Ability to apply property to multiple controls in the Properties window
6. Delete multiple controls

What is not included:

1. Ability to drag multiple controls
2. Cut/Copy/Paste multiple elements

We are, of course, considering bringing full functionality in the next version of the Visual Studio and Visual Web Developer.

Here are screenshots from one of the recent VS 2008 SP1 build:

Posted: Thursday, June 12, 2008 2:07 AM by WebDevTools

Comments

کتابخانه دیجیتال said:

i think that the vs2008 sp1 beta is doing well and every developer is waiting for the final release of sp1.

# June 12, 2008 1:03 AM

Martin H. Normark said:

Personally, this feature will not affect the way I work. I *never* use the Design View in Visual Studio, simply because I don't want it to produce inline styles for me.

Can it put the style in your CSS file, when a control has a CssClass specified?

# June 12, 2008 1:31 AM

WebDevTools said:

Yes, the Design View fully supports externally defined styles.  You'll be interested in the Direct Style Application feature: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb398977.aspx

# June 12, 2008 2:12 AM

BigFoppa said:

Yes, that is good news! Even though it is half way without Cut/Paste and Drag/Drop.

Even better news is that you demonstrate that our input matters and that you are willing to change priorities based on it.

See what M$ and manpower can do

/Big

# June 12, 2008 4:47 AM

Sam Gentile said:

Enjoying cup of Starbucks and Deep Purple Live in Stockholm 1970 (via Zune marketplace). WCF/WF My good

# June 12, 2008 8:47 AM

Edwin said:

Yes, it is half way without Cut/Paste and Drag/Drop !!!

# June 12, 2008 9:24 AM

Brenda Myers said:

You must be the same people that designed Office 2007.  This functionality has worked and been used for a number of years, so let's take it out, or we can make it unusable by putting it in a fluent ribbon where no one can find it.

# June 12, 2008 12:02 PM

scratchgame said:

disappointed to hear it is not fully implemented, but completely understand... how about for SP2 ??!!

still... i'm so glad we are getting it in a partial form... sooooo glad.  thanks!

# June 14, 2008 10:26 PM

ian deswarte said:

Looks good. Are we talking days, weeks or months?

# June 25, 2008 1:48 PM

ian deswarte said:

A far bigger problem than Multiple Control Selection is that it seems, that at the moment, although abolute positioning is possible for most controls (despite your suggestion tat this is a problem), itis not apparently possible for the Label control. Is this going to be addressed?

# June 28, 2008 5:29 PM

Paul M. said:

Does RTM not refer to "Release To Manufacturers" ?

Or is RTM a typo on this page?  If true, how soon to the public?

Also, will ".Net Framework 3.5 SP1" be release at the same time as VS SP1 ?  (Even bundled within?)

Thanks a great deal, (in advance)!

# June 30, 2008 4:56 AM

WebDevTools said:

RTM = Release to Manufactoring (i.e. to public). It is historical term from the times when bits had to be burned to CDs or copied to floppies :-) Now RTM is essentially making product available for public download.

# July 1, 2008 2:11 PM

Paul M. said:

You're teasing me!

The main reason I asked the previous question, was to know how far away is "the light at the end of the tunnel"!

# July 1, 2008 5:29 PM

Eric said:

I'm new to ASP.Net and I appreciate that you're adding multi-select. I hope you're fixing the bugs with label absolute positioning too. You can add the style="display:block" to get absolute positioning, but it should be automatic.

I've heard the you MS guys talk about how Tables and CSS are better than absolute positioning, but in your video tutorials online, you do everything with absolute positioning. You might have a lot less angry customers if you posted updated videos that demonstrate how to use the new VWD tools.

From what I've read, tables are the way of the past, absolute positioning is the way of the present, and you guys say that CSS is the way of the future. If it's so great, please show us why it's better and teach us how to use it. For how much you MS developers seem to be pushing CSS, I don't see anything about it in the tutorials.

# July 8, 2008 1:17 PM

Dixon said:

Thats great.... When was it you said it would be available?

# July 19, 2008 7:27 PM

Drambuie said:

"RTM = Release to Manufactoring (i.e. to public). It is historical term from the times when bits had to be burned to CDs or copied to floppies :-) Now RTM is essentially making product available for public download."

And waiting for it to come out is now the main barrier to moving up to SQL Server 2008.

I guess people are chomping at the bit knowing that your post states it is ready and that you are using it, but none of us can download it yet.

# August 7, 2008 10:06 AM

Visual Web Developer Team Blog said:

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and Visual Web Developer 2008 SP1 are now available for download . This blog post

# August 13, 2008 2:44 PM

Visual Web Developer Team Blog said:

In an earlier blog , we mentioned that multiple control selection was returning with VS2008 SP1. We also

# August 20, 2008 4:03 PM

Strategic Developer | Martin Heller said:

A reader switched to Visual Studio 2008 SP1 for its improved support for absolute CSS positioning

# August 25, 2008 4:56 PM

Sam Gentile's Blog said:

Enjoying cup of Starbucks and Deep Purple Live in Stockholm 1970 (via Zune marketplace). WCF/WF My good friend Marjan has worked hard with us Influencers (I wish I wasn’t so busy) to come up with a stellar bunch of Webcasts! Must see! One of the

# December 2, 2008 4:39 PM
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