Need some opinions and help. Thanks.

[Miguel Dias Moura]

Hello,

Until now I have been using Macromedia Dreamweaver to create web sites.
I worked in PHP and ASP.

However in this moment I work mostly in ASP.NET.

What is the best tool to create ASP.NET web sites?
I would like something where I can work with code but at same time I can
also have a visual idea of what is going on.

I have been working in ASP.NET / VB.

Visual Studio? ASP.NET Web Matrix?

I am a little bit lost. Please understand.

Thanks,
Miguel

 

[Mike Ryan]

Hi Miguel,

It will probably depend on your personal situation and requirements.
Visual Studio.NET 2003 would be my recommendation; however, it can be
expensive if you're self-financing.

Is this for current development, or for future/prospective development
with the 2.0 beta?

I believe with the Framework 1.0 and 1.1 versions, developers who
weren't using Visual Studio yet wanted some GUI design capability were
using ASP.NET Web Matrix (
http://www.asp.net/Default.aspx?tabindex=4&tabid=46 ) for layout and a
separate code editor for coding (for example, SharpDevelop). [Of course
you could use a code editor exclusively, but you'd lose the drag/drop
design capability.]

If you're interested in the ASP.NET 2.0 beta, you might want to check
out MS's Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition Beta.

I don't know much about Dreamweaver. I do know it supports ASP.NET, but
from your question it seems like it might not be meeting your needs.

Good luck!

- Mike

 

[Jeremy S.]

My opinion:
I develop ASP.NET Web applications (sites) using both Dreamweaver and VS.NET
2003. I use Dreamweaver for all HTML and CSS work as well as for site
maintenance tasks (transferring files to production server etc). I use
VS.NET 2003 for everything else - including code-behind/debugging work and
launching test sessions of the the application. I avoid Dreamweaver's
supposed ASP.NET support features. As you may have seen in this group,
VS.NET 2003 will automatically rewrite your HTML if you give it the chance -
which is a very frustrating situation; the next version of Visual Studio
will apparently not do that... something to keep in mind. The way to prevent
Visual Studio from rewriting your HTML is to *not* open your aspx, html, or
ascx files in Visual Studio. So, in practice, I typically open both
Dreamweaver and VS.NET 2003 at the same time - and switch back and forth
depending on what I'm working on - with all test sessions launched from
VS.NET.

This is just my approach and it works well for me. Others report doing
something similar, but use FrontPage instead of Dreamweaver. In any case
this whole scenario is expected to change in the next version of VS.NET. I
haven't played with it yet so I can't tell you what to expect there.

Good Luck.