Improving client-side development in Visual Studio
ASP.NET, CSS, JavaScript By Dave Ward. Updated July 28, 2010For several years now, I have been consistently impressed with how Microsoft’s developer division gathers feedback and proactively responds. Nearly every time that I’ve participated in a survey or otherwise provided feedback (solicited or not), someone has followed up with me about my specific concerns. In my experience with how other large companies gather feedback, that’s not common.
So, when I answered a recent survey about ASP.NET development in Visual Studio 2010, I wasn’t surprised when I received a follow-up email from a friendly fellow at Microsoft named Xinyang. In the optional comments section, I had mentioned my concern that CSS and JavaScript editing are becoming second class citizens in Visual Studio. In response, Xinyang asked me to provide more detail on that comment.
As I composed a lengthy email reply to him, it occurred to me that a post here would be a much more effective way to refine my feedback and potentially gather more responses from you at the same time.
So, here are a few of my ideas for improving client-side development in Visual Studio 2010, separated into CSS and JavaScript specific feedback. Xinyang and some of his colleagues will be reading this and your comments, so if you agree, disagree, or have other ideas yourself, be sure to chime in.


When you have a name as common as mine, you run across the entire gamut of schemes to deal with username availability in membership systems. By availability, of course I mean denial and rejection. Out of all of the ways that I’ve had “Dave” rejected, inline AJAX verification is definitely the least annoying. Wanting to be less-annoying myself, I’ve added the same functionality to my ASP.NET AJAX sites. Let me show you how I did it.
Your wishes are my command. Highslide JS .NET now includes support for captioning. The captions can be specified using the Caption property of each HighslideImage control, and can be easily styled using CSS.
