Do real developers use the design view?

[chrisn]

Do real developers use the design view?

Thought it would be interesting to start a debate on this subject.

According to all the MCP materials (yes, I know a bit mickey mouse),
the design view is the way to build your ASP.NET pages.

Problem is:
- it generates goddam awful HTML, certainly not standards-based.
- use of absolute positioning and tables for layout.
- it has a tendency to mess up the layout of your markup.

So I just don't use it, and if you don't use it then you get to a point
where your pages won't open with it anyway.

Is the design view just for beginners?

I'd be interested to hear other's thoughts on this...

 

[Mr Newbie]

I know quite a few people who back engineer their sites. They use something
like Front Page or Dreamweaver to design the site and then work the ASP.NET
code into the site and miss out the visual designer all together.

These guys simply dont trust the designer not to trash some peice of
carfully crafted hand code.

I on the other hand find it quite acceptable. Having said that 2003 and 2005
have got a way to go in terms of visual design features before it becomes
'Great' in my opinion.

Having said all that, I still think its a very good development tool.


The Inimitable Mr Newbie . . .

 

[Damien]

Do real developers use the design view?

Thought it would be interesting to start a debate on this subject.

According to all the MCP materials (yes, I know a bit mickey mouse),
the design view is the way to build your ASP.NET pages.

Problem is:
- it generates goddam awful HTML, certainly not standards-based.
- use of absolute positioning and tables for layout.
- it has a tendency to mess up the layout of your markup.

So I just don't use it, and if you don't use it then you get to a point
where your pages won't open with it anyway.

Is the design view just for beginners?

I'd be interested to hear other's thoughts on this...

Of course I use design view - after I've added a whole load of server
side controls in using HTML view, I'm too lazy to go and add them to
the code-behind file. So I switch to design view and then back to HTML,
which normally does the trick

It doesn't *have* to use absolute positioning. In fact, the message
before you drop anything on the surface tells you how to change the
behaviour (for this one file - anyone ever found a project or system
wide way of saying "use flow layout at all times"?)

It can mess up your markup. Some of this can be fixed by turning off
appropriate options in Visual Studio (but admittedly, some bits are
still reformatted anyway).

Up until recently I was involved in a project with a fairly even split
- I tend to do all of my development in HTML view, the other developer
tends to use Design view. We never seemed to have much problem editing
each others pages afterwards (although, curse him, he does use a
different tab spacing as compared to mine - but ^K ^D forgives all)

Damien

 

[Greg Burns]

Of course I use design view - after I've added a whole load of server
side controls in using HTML view, I'm too lazy to go and add them to
the code-behind file. So I switch to design view and then back to HTML,
which normally does the trick

It doesn't *have* to use absolute positioning. In fact, the message
before you drop anything on the surface tells you how to change the
behaviour (for this one file - anyone ever found a project or system
wide way of saying "use flow layout at all times"?)

It can mess up your markup. Some of this can be fixed by turning off
appropriate options in Visual Studio (but admittedly, some bits are
still reformatted anyway).

Up until recently I was involved in a project with a fairly even split
- I tend to do all of my development in HTML view, the other developer
tends to use Design view. We never seemed to have much problem editing
each others pages afterwards (although, curse him, he does use a
different tab spacing as compared to mine - but ^K ^D forgives all)

Damien

You'll be glad to know 2005 fixes a lot of this. Flow is the default. They
swear they will never, ever modify your html when switching back-n-forth to
design. Finally, due to the differences in how ASP.NET 2.0 works, VS no
longer needs to create the controls in the codebehind file - so no synching
problems!

Greg

 

[Kevin Spencer]

Real developers make use of whatever resources get the job done most
efficiently. For example, with regards to the Design View, I have found that
it is lousy for some things, and quite handy for others. A good developer
figures out what tools are the best for what jobs, and uses them
accordingly. So, no, the Design View is not just for beginners. Using the
Design View for everything, now, that's for beginners. Using it for nothing,
well, that's for people who don't think creatively.

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
..Net Developer
A watched clock never boils.

 

[Damien]

You'll be glad to know 2005 fixes a lot of this. Flow is the default. They
swear they will never, ever modify your html when switching back-n-forth to
design. Finally, due to the differences in how ASP.NET 2.0 works, VS no
longer needs to create the controls in the codebehind file - so no synching
problems!

Greg

I still haven't had a real chance to have a proper play with 2005 stuff
(i.e. Don't have any projects suitable for starting as .NET 2 stuff
yet), but sounds good. Looks like I'm generally going to be a web
monkey for the next year, so I'm pretty sure something will turn up (I
think I made a good choice there - do new websites or maintain VB6
code-base. I got first choice )

Damien

 

[Steve C. Orr [MVP, MCSD]]

I agree with Kevin, the designer is fine for most things, but you can use
external tools for certain tasks when needed.
The new designer in ASP.NET 2.0 is a big improvement too.

 

[Larry]

Our team is trying to write transitional XHTML standards code (with
CSS controlling layout), so we are sensitive to some of these issues.
We are in Beta 2 and about to switch to the release of 2005, and don't
have porblems switching back and forth and using the design view with
our markup.

I'll tell you what we find really useful is writing custom designers.
We have an infrastructure team which writes custom controls, some of
which are complicated/error prone/annoying to configure properly. So we
write our own designers which can do whatever we need, even generate
and add xml files to our project.

My point is, if you view the designer as more than a page layout tool
but a launching pad for web-building tasks, you can put together some
amazing things - and I come from a J2EE background and thought the
designer was the lamest thing when I first saw it.