I was just curious how people code their ASP.NET pages ...

I don't play with the VS crap... leaves too much ugly stuff hanging around and it's way too confusing... I use DreamWeaver, but only for the syntax highlighting... I code 100% manually.

I do not use crap VS or slow DW.. Web Matrix is nice, but it messed up on my computer like upgrading IE 5.5 and .Net Framework soemthing..

I use JEdit or Eclipse.. "Alternative IDEs to Visual Studio.NET" at http://www.dotnetcoders.com/web/Articles/ShowArticle.aspx?article=49

eh... I didn't like eclipse either. I'll use notpad++ before I use that crap. DW has a very nice FTP/Remoting interface... forgot to mention that's the other REALLY big reason I use it.

And Web Matrix? Junk... imho of course

I write all my ASP.NET in dreamweaver source code view. I know it may not be very efficient, but it gets the job done. I just kind of control freak. I like to do my design first then insert my Labels into the design. Then write the scripts at the top of the page to load some dynamically created HTML into each of the labels. This works great as long as your aren't appending to your strings 1000s of times. I even use XML for all my database needs. nothing like tons of while loops and if statements searching for your data. Eventually I will move on up to SQL, just too greedy to pay the extra $10 a month to have SQL running on my hosting account. Does anybody else write their code like this?

This is a trick question isn't it?

When you say "code your ASP.NET pages" do you mean the actual .NET CODE or the accompanying HTML that displays said code?

I use a combination. I do 100% of my code in Visual Studio. I then do my layout & deisgn work in Fireworks/Dreamweaver. I dunno how ANYONE can NOT use Visual Studio to actually write their code. It is pure heaven for programming. I mean Intellisense ALONE is worth it's weight in gold.

Only if you take it as one

Bryant

Yeah I have a buddy of mine who is a huge VS.NET fan. He is always giving me the lecture that I am not using the true power of .net ( precompiled DLL ) Eventually I will move on up to VS.NET, but it just so hard to break old habbits.

I just can't imagine doing .NET coding in anything BUT Visual Studio. Note that I said "coding" and not "layout" or "design". VS.NET isn't really design friendly and I dunno if it's really supposed to be. You can crank out basic forms and then stylize them in something else more suited to the graphical or artistic work - that's how I do it. But for actually making the code behinds and the different logical tiers for your application etc...VS.NET is the way to go.

The main thing that frustrates me about ASP.NET is that all of the elements use the style attribute for CSS formatting rather than defining each class and allowing you to easily set up a single CSS sheet for your pages. I understand why they did this (I think to make it easier to automatically render for older browsers that don't support CSS but still need the same formatting), but I still wish it was easier to work with CSS stylesheets in Visual Studio.

I'm just starting building actual pages using ASP.NET. (So far I've just built ASP.NET custom server controls). For HTML work, I'm still using Adobe GoLive 6. As I start building pages that actually require ASP.NET functionality, I'm sure I'll be using VS.NET.

If you mean VS.NET instead of ASP.NET then agreed, VS.NET isn't really too friendly for stylizing you pages which is why I use other tools for that. But for the actual coding process - it can't be beat. All the debugging it can do, all the help you get form Intellisense, etc etc - it's a great product for programmers...not designers.

You don't HAVE to use the style tag in ASP.NET if you don't want to...it is however hte default way that VS.NET handles styling.

I agree, nothing I've seen can compare to VS.NET for building stuff that actually has some code to it. Though, I hate when people put .NET code directly into their .aspx pages. There's so many examples (even from MS) that do this, but I'd wish they'd stick to the codebehind files for this.

I do realize that you don't have to use the style tag, but I just wish MS had taken a bit more time in desiging this. If you want to use the property editor (very handy) then you end up with all kinds of stuff in the style tag. I just wish there was an easier way to reference styles in an external style sheet, directly from the property editor - or at least something to avoid all of the repitition caused by using the style tag. If you set the font color of every control on a page to red, then you end up with that in the style attribute of every control. Any sort of common style you apply should be pulled out an put in a CSS sheet. (Though I can see how this could get pretty difficult to automate). I guess what I'm trying to say is that the current way the style tag is used can cause a lot of page bloat.

I think microsoft did that because they wanted developers to be able to write asp.net code in notepad if needed. VS.net is great because of the DLL capability, but if you were forced to use VS.NET to write asp.net pages, far fewer developers would use asp.net and more would stick to asp, or php. I am guilty of the writing all my .net code in my asp.net pages. Its just easier for me because most of the coding I do is graphic intensive. I take my projects one asp.net page at time. Plus I don't like letting VS.NET managing my files.

I have started moving to codebehind, but I build most of my projects around custom classes so if I only need 10 lines of code or less in a page then I just throw it in inline (usually just passing a SQL statement or a variable from the page to a class function or something of that nature). No sense in having a bunch of extra files floating around. Im kinda an organization and neat freak. But at times when there's extensive code, yes, codebehind 100%.

[googly] It makes me feel like a programmer :blush: [/googly]

VS.NET just feel so bulky and overdone to me...

Josh,
Are you writing your code behinds in VS.NET or in Dreamweaver? Does anybody know of any good tutorials for using code behinds and the performance benefits of them?