2003 vs 2005B

[rawCoder]

Dear All,

Just wanted to inquire whether VS.NET 2005 Beta is more stable than the
VS.NET 2003 (using common features only as in case of a port) ?
Also when is right time (earliest) to port a product made in VS.NET 2003 to
the newer version and whether its redistributable is available or not ?


Thank You in advance
rawCoder

 

[Cor Ligthert]

Hi Rawcoder,

See this thread which was yesterday in the VBNet newsgroup, and go to the
begin and don't look to much at the ending kind of chitchat just to make the
messages more clear.

http://tinyurl.com/5u386


Cor

 

[rawCoder]

Hi Cor,

Thanx for reply.

Sorry for not reading it earlier and wasting a post. (Actually the subject
didnt suggest the content and I unfortunately cant read all posts.)

btw, this tinyURL is really kool, I wonder why the idea isn't catching up.
Or may be I am missing something again.

Thanks again
rawCoder

 

[Gerry O'Brien [MVP]]

No Beta product exhibits stability of release products. You make it sound
as though you are having problems with VS 2003.

2005 is still in Beta1 which means there are still bugs being found and
fixed. Also, 2005 still has debug symbols in the code which help to locate
and diagnose errors. This also causes the code to run slower than release
code which has been fully optimized by the compiler.

 

[Doug Forster]

Hey Gerry,

This may be true in general, but in the case of VS 2003 its a serious
question. The VS 2003 forms designer is an incredible mess of bugs and we
for one are champing at the bit for a reliable version so we can get on with
serious work instead of forever inventing workarounds and recovering design
information that VS simply chucks away seemingly at random

Cheers

Doug Forster

 

[Gerry O'Brien [MVP]]

What kind of issues are you experiencing? We have been using 2003 from Beta
until now and I see no bugs with the forms designer.

Can you give me some examples that I can try out.

I do know that if you make changes to the code in the Designer Generated
section that it will be overwritten by VS. Visual Studio 2005 solves that
issue.

I'd like to try some of the things that you are seeing as bugs. Not that I
can fix them or have them fixed in 2003 if they are bugs but you can submit
these issues via product feedback to Microsoft so they can be looked at for
possible fixes in service packs.

 

[Brian Henry]

oh there is bugs with the form designer we've had controls mysteriously
"disappear" by themselfs on compiles and other odd stuff like that then when
you go back to the form to look at it they are mysteriously missing on there
too like they never existed..

 

[Jeff Gaines]

oh there is bugs with the form designer we've had controls
mysteriously "disappear" by themselfs on compiles and other odd stuff
like that then when you go back to the form to look at it they are
mysteriously missing on there too like they never existed..

Not to say links between MenuItems and their procedures disappearing,
even though the MenuItems are still there - and the mummy of them all
when the editor seems to go into 'column mode' and deletes the first 10
or so characters from each line of code - that's a real killer!

 

[Gerry O'Brien [MVP]]

Wow! I have never experienced any of those issues. Are these rare or
often?

 

[Jeff Gaines]

Wow! I have never experienced any of those issues. Are these rare
or often?

The 'Column Mode' issue has happened to me three times in about a year,
nobody else will acknowledge its existence though!

 

[Gerry O'Brien [MVP]]

Just out of curiousity, is any of this code written within the Windows Forms
Designer Generated section?

 

[Jeff Gaines]

Just out of curiousity, is any of this code written within the
Windows Forms Designer Generated section?

Yes indeed, *all* of the affected code is in that section, doesn't
affect anything anywhere else.

I don't normally edit that part of the code. It normally happens after
I've pasted a chunk of code in, sometimes from an HTML document/web
page so I guess there's some hidden codes of some sort that cause this
to happen.

 

[Gerry O'Brien [MVP]]

Well, that answers the mystery.

The code in that section is constantly being rewritten or overwritten by the
IDE as a result of changes you make to the form designer by adding and
deleting controls, etc.

There is a warning about placing or modifying code in this section. Your
problem is the precise reason that warning is placed there.

Microsoft considers that region to be sort of a "sandbox" for code. They
don't like you messing around with their sandbox.

I can assure you that Visual studio 2005 will fix this issue. Althought it
is not considered a "bug", there is a new feature in Visual Studio 2005 that
will address this issue. You will get your own sandbox to write code in
that will be seperate from Microsoft's sandbox.

 

[Jeff Gaines]

Well, that answers the mystery.

The code in that section is constantly being rewritten or overwritten
by the IDE as a result of changes you make to the form designer by
adding and deleting controls, etc.

There is a warning about placing or modifying code in this section.
Your problem is the precise reason that warning is placed there.

Microsoft considers that region to be sort of a "sandbox" for code.
They don't like you messing around with their sandbox.

I can assure you that Visual studio 2005 will fix this issue.
Althought it is not considered a "bug", there is a new feature in
Visual Studio 2005 that will address this issue. You will get your
own sandbox to write code in that will be seperate from Microsoft's
sandbox.

Well I've always wanted my own sandbox!

Just to clarify, the pasting I was doing was not in the MS sandbox, I
never touch that. It's just that pasting elsewhere in the app affected
that part of the file for some reason.

I did run the MSDN beta for a while but took it off in the end because
when I built an install project in v1.1 all the v2 files seemed to have
over-written it, perhaps a later beta will be better.