Datasheet

Tag Navigator

Visual Studio 2005 comes with a new Tag Navigator feature that enables developers to easily track their

location in a HTML document, thereby providing excellent navigation support. The Tag Navigator dis-

plays the current path within the source of an HTML page by displaying a list of all the HTML tags that

contain the tag where your cursor is currently located. Clicking on any of the nodes enables developers

to optionally change the source level selection, and quickly move up and down a deep HTML hierarchy.

This feature can be very handy, especially when you are editing multiple nested HTML elements. For

example, when you are editing multiple nested HTML tables, it is very easy to get lost, and you can

leverage Tag Navigator to easily identify the current path within the hierarchy of table elements.

Targeting Specific Browsers and HTML Validation

Using Visual Studio 2005, you can easily target a specific HTML standard or browser when writing your

HTML pages. For example, you can target your HTML pages to work with a particular browser, such as

Internet Explorer 5.0 or Netscape Navigator 4.0. Alternatively, you can target a particular HTML stan-

dard, such as XHTML 1.0 Strict or XHTML 1.0 Transitional. As you type your HTML in the source editor,

it will be automatically validated in real time. Invalid HTML will automatically be underlined with a red

squiggly line, and all the validation errors are also summarized in real time within the Task List window.

Code Refactoring

Code Refactoring allows you to change the code structure without changing or affecting what the code

itself actually does. For example, changing a variable name or packaging a few lines of code into a

method are part of Code Refactoring. The main difference between Code Refactoring and a mere edit or

find-and-replace is that you can harness the intelligence of the compiler to distinguish between code and

comments, and so on. Code Refactoring is supported everywhere that you can write code, including

both code-behind and single-file ASP.NET pages.

Smart Tasks

Smart tasks are a new feature that displays a pop-up list of common tasks that you can perform on an

ASP.NET control. For example, when you add a

GridView control to a page, a common task list appears,

which allows you to quickly enable sorting, paging, or editing for the

GridView. Visual Studio 2005

enables you to perform many of the most common programming tasks directly from the designer sur-

face. When you drag new controls onto the designer surface, a pop-up list of common tasks automati-

cally appears. You can use the common tasks list to quickly configure a control’s properties, as well as

walk through common operations you might perform with it. Smart tasks can go a long way in increas-

ing the productivity of the developers, allowing developers to create feature-rich, database-driven web

applications without writing a single line of code.

Creating Web Projects

With Visual Studio 2005, you have more flexibility and features for managing the files in your web pro-

jects. When you bring up the New Web Site dialog box and click on the Browse button, you will see the

dialog box shown in Figure 1-3.

Chapter 1: Introduction to ASP.NET 2.0

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