ASP .NET a downgrade from what VB, ActiveX and Visiual Studio could do - Help?

[JS]

Hello,

I am using ASP .Net to create my own web controls and I have noticed that
there is one too many requirements that forces the developer to be aware of
and get involved with. In the past the developer could choose between using
VC++ and/or VB to create active X controls which primarily only required for
the developer to focus on the logic of the code behind of what the control
needed to accomplished. The new Visual Studio .Net does leave a lot to
desire from what the old Visual Studio 6.0 allowed to do. Now I have to:

- Render the control (Studio 6.0 allowed for me to just drag the look and
feel that I wanted): Is this a something that Microsoft did not have the
time to think of? Or have they just decided that the world needs more
developers ... What happened to the concept of ZERO Coding? What happened
to the fact that the business analysts will be able to compose Software
applications together?

- There are one too many Interfaces and idiosyncrasies that makes it a
tougher element to learn - To begin with the books out there are very poor
(actually one of the best websites I found was www.asp.net - which you would
think would carry least clear content) - Microsoft Press books are faulty
and WROX (you know what WROX is all about - copy and paste - lines and lines
of useless code).

- Visual Studio intelli...what? The GUI gives me bogus reactions to
what I type - and only after compilation will it then refresh what the real
syntax errors may be located at (even if there is an option to fix this,
then why is it not on by default...)

I would like to know if Microsoft or any other vendor is trying to make
ASP .Net Custom Control development a much easier task than what it is
today. What happened to Click-Drag and Drop? I want to create a DLL like I
used to be able to do so using VB. And no, I don't want to conform with
just creating User Custom User Web Form Controls (ascx), but rather true
custom controls that get compiled to DLLs.

Anybody has some insight about new IDEs that may attempt to ease up the
development of custom ASP.NET controls?

Thank you,

Pete

 

[Cowboy \(Gregory A. Beamer\) [MVP]]

1. It gets better in .NET 2.0.
2. For more power, you often take a step back to go forward
3. Much of your complaint is your heavy understanding of COM and not of .NET

Yes, it is a bit of a pain, but, realistically, ActiveX was a pain, as well.
The pains were just different types of pains and you are not used to this
pain.

Now, depending on what you are using controls for, there are ways around the
pain. User controls are easier to code than server controls. The problem is
they do not render in the IDE. For elements repeated on each page, both will
do. In .NET 2.0, you will have master pages, which further simplify this
model.

Books: Wrox is dead. The MSPress books are actually fairly decent, esp.
compared to old MS Press books. The APress stuff is a bit too specific. Many
try to write ASP in ASP.NET. Yuck! The free material on the MSDN site is
fairly decent, including free downloads of a variety of books. The
www.asp.net site is written by some really good guys at Microsoft, many of
whom used to write for Wrox. ;->

The biggest issue I had, coming from VB COM and ASP, was making the paradigm
shift. Now, I hate having to go back to legacy COM work.

--
Gregory A. Beamer
MVP; MCP: +I, SE, SD, DBA

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