DISCLAIMER: I don't care if there are bugs in a piece of software as there are always bugs in software. What I care about is the lack of fixes for a bug.
> There's many designer issues logged on > http://connect.microsoft.com/visualstudio/feedback. Some are feature > requests (like support for forms/controls using generics or abstract base > classes) but hardly any seem to be of any importance to anyone other than > the person that logged it. If the issues that have been raised in this > thread are important to anyone reading it they should make their voice > heard on the feedback site by voting for these issues. Searching for the > words "forms designer" shows a very large list of issues (some > suggestions, some bugs) but the only issues that have more than a couple > of votes seem only to be feature requests (again, abstracts and generics > in the forms designer). From Microsoft's point of view the community is > saying most of the issues described in this thread aren't important. Well, if Microsoft doesn't respond, why should I log more issues on connect? I waited for more than a YEAR to get even a small REPLY on a very basic designer flaw in vs.net and they even responded with 'By design' (hint: this is an IDE crash. Throw an exception in a method called from a smarttag in designer view: Poof. So 'by design' ?) or 'postponed'. No offence but that's really not motivating me to log a lot of issues. Another reasons why there aren't a lot of issues logged are that the site isn't widely known, requires a passport to login, and often people simply accept it as a way of life how vs.net works. I have a form in my application I can't design anymore in vs.net 2005, because the forms designer throws an exception in the goo IT GENERATED ITSELF (it forgets to insert an instantiation for a usercontrol). In the webform designer I have major problems with my own datasourcecontrols when I ask VS.NET for a set of types available in the solution. (Lhotka experienced the same stuff, with is csla datasourcecontrols) Often VS.NET gives up and reports NO TYPES because the control's assembly is in another appdomain than the solution (done by vs.net, I have no control over this)(tempfiles mismatch, I have no idea what causes this, but it's a major pain). To fix it, you have to close the forms, close vs.net, restart vs.net, load the solution, BUILD, open the form in html view, open the form in visual view. web projects, the new variant: typing HTML and making an error will open the errors window, even if it's closed. This is major annoying and I can't get rid of it. Writing your own controls for web: add them to the toolbox. Test them, ok some things have to be updated: you go back to the control project, change code, compile... and the vs.net toolbox ones aren't updated! You've to wade through a lot of steps, which consume unnecessary time, to get the next build up so you can even drag it on the webform. Ever did some winforms with your own user controls? Was it fun? I bet you ran into a lot of problems as everybody else with that setup. Perhaps I do things no-one else does, but I seriously doubt it. It's just a set of annoying things which pile up to a big annoyance. In november 2005 (!) I reported to Microsoft that if you had a file with > 1000 lines open in C#, typing was slow. A month ago they released a hotfix for it. Do you know where to get it? perhaps. Do the major part of the C# developers know where to get the hotfix or even know that after a year (!) they finally fixed it? I doubt it. They simply accept that the editor can be slow sometimes or they're slow typers so they don't notice. ;) > The issue of performance toggling between code/design views is a big issue > that the Visual Studio team is working on--it's one of the only bugs that > has garnered a lot of votes (49 at last count). If you find or know of an > issue on Connect you feel is important (or was raised in this thread), > post the URL here (or the WinForms list if it's a WinForms designer issue) > with a description so everyone else can vote on it--if it's important to > them. It's clear that Microsoft is working on the bugs that the community > has said are important on Connect. After that, they're working on the > bugs they feel have a priority. I understand that people who write business apps run into different issues than people who write lowlevel frameworks on top of .net. I'm in that last group and then the world is a little different than for the people who write business apps. Perhaps it's also that I don't accept a lot of issues from VS.NET anymore, simply because they've spend the last 4, 5 years developing it, so you could expect some things to be part of the past now. However, as things work inside MS, it's hard to get company wide understanding about this: new versions fix old versions issues, BUGS are fixed by support teams, product teams work on new stuff, that's basicly the cycle, and we on the outside can jump up and down and rant all day but that won't change. So we can only HOPE that PSS fixes the bugs soon and a new version fixes design flaws. > Discussing bugs in Visual Studio on these lists may get you advice on a > workaround and allow you to blow off steam; but it won't get the bug fixed. What does help then? The only remedy I found how to get a bug fixed is by reporting it 2 days before a product launch: the ide crash bug I ran into right before the vs.net 2005 launch was fixed very quickly. However everything after that wasn't and it costs a lot of energy to get MS' attention to even address something. Considering how things are scheduled, it's understandable, from their POV. Considering how much some issues can plague customers, it's also understandable people are getting fed up with it. It's just that there's still a large group of people who simply accepts the issues and waits for a slow form loader to complete and repeats work already performed because there's no alternative apparently (they think). If more and more people would vent their concern with the VERY SLOW cycle how Microsoft releases fixes, they might do something about it. FB =================================== This list is hosted by DevelopMentor® http://www.develop.com View archives and manage your subscription(s) at http://discuss.develop.com
