VS2005 IDE definately NOT worth using...

[Noozer]

....so I'm looking for a better development environment.

Currently, I'm a fairly green ASP programmer. Most of my databases have been
MS Access, but I'm developing on MS SQL server. I'm hoping to learn PHP in
the near future. Most of my scripting is done in VBScript, but I do employ
Javascript as well.

Most of my coding up until recently was simply done with Notepad and a
browser open to Google for tags and script that I had issues with. I've
never liked using WYSIWYG layout editors.

What I'd like in an IDE is:
- able to open and save using FTP to my web host
- colour coded syntax
- automatic listing of members
- the ability to automatically apply attribute quotes and close tags
- multiple documents open at one time
- validate for specific browsers or HTML standards
- no need for WYSIWYG layout editors
- no complicated Source file control

Am I hoping for too much, or is there actually something out there?

 

[John Salerno]

...so I'm looking for a better development environment.

Are you serious? I haven't used the IDE for Web Developer much, but I
imagine it's no different than the one for C#, which is flat-out
amazing. What don't you like about it?

 

[Noozer]

Are you serious? I haven't used the IDE for Web Developer much, but I
imagine it's no different than the one for C#, which is flat-out amazing.
What don't you like about it?

Trying to save a 20 line ASP file... Alt-S-> Click the dropdown to choose a
folder....wait, wait, go turn on the kettle, wait... Literally 2+ minutes
before I could do anything in VS.

Having to have <@ lanugage="vbscript"> at the top of ALL my files to get the
syntax coloring to work. Of course the line needs to be removed from all the
files or the web server errors.

Ever try to paste in the IDE? Copy some text from a webpage and paste it
into your code - gets pretty mangled eh? No problem, just set the option to
always paste as HTML. Hrm.. still having problems. Whenever I paste the new
text is selected, meaning that as soon as I type, it erases what I just
pasted. I also can't paste the same text over and over as it just keep
replacing the newly pasted text.

Then there is no simple way to create an ASP project, unless you want all
the .Net baggage that goes with it.

Then there's all the reformatting it does on it's own. I cut a line, then
paste it right back to the same place and it changes the order of the tag
attributes, adds line breaks, etc.

....I could go on, but I'm sure someone else would like a turn.

 

[Toby Inkster]

What I'd like in an IDE is:
- able to open and save using FTP to my web host
- colour coded syntax
- automatic listing of members
- the ability to automatically apply attribute quotes and close tags
- multiple documents open at one time
- validate for specific browsers or HTML standards
- no need for WYSIWYG layout editors
- no complicated Source file control

Screem <http://www.screem.org/> can do pretty much all of this. It also
has a built-in WYSIWYG *preview* (not *editor* -- uses either Gecko or
GtkHTML to provide this preview), spelling checker, support for CVS as a
version control system. It will properly read DTDs, so it can syntax
highlight not just HTML, but also other XML/SGML files with DOCTYPEs.

Screem is mostly developed for Linux/UNIX, but I imagine it could be made
to run on Mac OS X and Windows, providing an X server is installed.

 

[John Salerno]

Trying to save a 20 line ASP file... Alt-S-> Click the dropdown to choose a
folder....wait, wait, go turn on the kettle, wait... Literally 2+ minutes
before I could do anything in VS.

Having to have <@ lanugage="vbscript"> at the top of ALL my files to get the
syntax coloring to work. Of course the line needs to be removed from all the
files or the web server errors.

Ever try to paste in the IDE? Copy some text from a webpage and paste it
into your code - gets pretty mangled eh? No problem, just set the option to
always paste as HTML. Hrm.. still having problems. Whenever I paste the new
text is selected, meaning that as soon as I type, it erases what I just
pasted. I also can't paste the same text over and over as it just keep
replacing the newly pasted text.

Then there is no simple way to create an ASP project, unless you want all
the .Net baggage that goes with it.

Then there's all the reformatting it does on it's own. I cut a line, then
paste it right back to the same place and it changes the order of the tag
attributes, adds line breaks, etc.

...I could go on, but I'm sure someone else would like a turn.

Well, like I said, I never used it much for ASP, just C#. I know there
is a way to reformat your code to fit your options. The syntax
highlighting problem is weird though. Maybe the IDE is different between
the two after all.

 

[Brian Cryer]

...so I'm looking for a better development environment.

Currently, I'm a fairly green ASP programmer. Most of my databases have
been MS Access, but I'm developing on MS SQL server. I'm hoping to learn
PHP in the near future. Most of my scripting is done in VBScript, but I do
employ Javascript as well.

Most of my coding up until recently was simply done with Notepad and a
browser open to Google for tags and script that I had issues with. I've
never liked using WYSIWYG layout editors.

What I'd like in an IDE is:
- able to open and save using FTP to my web host
- colour coded syntax
- automatic listing of members
- the ability to automatically apply attribute quotes and close tags
- multiple documents open at one time
- validate for specific browsers or HTML standards
- no need for WYSIWYG layout editors
- no complicated Source file control

Am I hoping for too much, or is there actually something out there?

Personally I don't think ASP has a future. I would suggest either you
migrate to .NET (its brilliant) or PHP (not quite so quick to develop with
but unlike .Net it doesn't constrain you to needing IIS hosting).

I must admit I've not used the 2005 IDE, I'm still using the 2003 version.
If its anything like the previous version then it is superb at developing
..Net applications, but doesn't really support ASP. For that you would be
better of looking at an old version of Visual-InterDev on ebay.

For PHP I've been using PHPEdit, not bad but you get what you pay for. (Its
cheap but not free although does come with a 30 day evaluation period.)

 

[SpaceGirl]

...so I'm looking for a better development environment.

Currently, I'm a fairly green ASP programmer. Most of my databases have been
MS Access, but I'm developing on MS SQL server. I'm hoping to learn PHP in
the near future. Most of my scripting is done in VBScript, but I do employ
Javascript as well.

Most of my coding up until recently was simply done with Notepad and a
browser open to Google for tags and script that I had issues with. I've
never liked using WYSIWYG layout editors.

What I'd like in an IDE is:
- able to open and save using FTP to my web host
- colour coded syntax
- automatic listing of members
- the ability to automatically apply attribute quotes and close tags
- multiple documents open at one time
- validate for specific browsers or HTML standards
- no need for WYSIWYG layout editors
- no complicated Source file control

Am I hoping for too much, or is there actually something out there?

DreamWeaver 8 does all of this and more.

 

[jussij]

I'm looking for a better development environment.

Take a look at the Zeus for Windows IDE:

http://www.zeusedit.com/features.html
Note: Zeus is shareware (45 day trial).

What I'd like in an IDE is:
- able to open and save using FTP to my web host

Zeus offers seamless ftp/sftp editing.

- colour coded syntax

The syntax highlighting is fully configurable and
comes predefined for HTML and javascript.

- the ability to automatically apply attribute quotes
and close tags

Zeus is fully scriptable so you can probably write a
macro to do something like this.

- multiple documents open at one time

Zeus has no limit (other than PC RAM) on the number
of open files.

- validate for specific browsers or HTML standards

It can even check you HTML for W3C conformance using
the Tidy HTML utility:

http://www.zeusedit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=194

- no need for WYSIWYG layout editors

Zeus is a text editor/IDE.

Jussi Jumppanen
Author: Zeus for Windows