I recently downloaded the css control adapters, and included the vertical menu sample in my web site. This menu makes use of the data source xml, and I find it extremely easy to customize links, and also the styles from the sample style sheet.

But...

When I am making changes to the style sheet, VS Studio crashes and shuts down. This occurs almost every time I make a change in this particular style sheet.  I have other style sheets, but they don't have this effect on the IDE when I edit them.

 As an aside to this, the built in web server for VS remains running, and if I re-open the designer and view a page from my site, it opens another instance of the built in web server. I'm thankful for relative-paths now!

Otherwise, the menu looks great in a variety of browsers, and functions as I expect.

I was very careful to include the required source files, including the code for the adapters, and also the java script.

Does anyone have any idea what may be occuring? I've been looking for clues in the event viewer and noticed that the Vswebdesign.dll was being named, and I believe that is the web designer in VS. I re-registered all the libraries associated to the web designer (at least,the ones I found info on) but the error persists! So any help or info would be much appreciated! 

I'm running a dual core Pentium on an ASUS board with 1 gig of memory, and Windows Vista os.

Any help or info would be much appreciated! 

Event viewer error message:

Hi Gary, I'd say that if you are crashing VS then you are hitting a bug in VS.  I can't imagine any legitimate circumstance where any probelm crashes and it is YOUR fault!

If you are not yet using SP1 for VS then I'd suggest that upgrading is your first step.  See http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/support/vs2005sp1/default.aspx.  Service Pack 1 was made available (for free) for all variants of VS a week or two ago.  See Scott Guthrie's announcement, http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/12/15/visual-studio-2005-service-pack-1-sp1-released.aspx.  Be sure to download and install the RIGHT version of SP1.  You need to choose carefully to correspond to whether you are using an Express version of VS or it standard/pro/team versions, etc. This is pretty clear when you visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/support/vs2005sp1/default.aspx.

If this is still causing VS to crash then I'd suggest you post back here and also contact some of the folks at MS directly, like Brian Goldfarb or Scott Guthrie.  If you need me to relay that message for you I can.  But first try SP1 and let's see if your problem has already been fixed by the VS team(s) at MS.

Thanks for the links, Russ!

I started by installing the Vista Service pack Beta 1. While most directions were clear, I wasn't sure whether this particularly service pack was what I needed since I don't have a beta of Vista; rather, I assumed this meant the SP was beta.

At any rate, I recieved the same error message after changing one item in the style sheet!

I'll try the VS Pro SP next.

I'll report back regarding this, and maybe look farther for an answer.

Thank you for your assistance, and here is the event viewer content for the latest error. (it's the same as the last)

Just tried the patch for VS 2005 Pro, which is my version (although I updated it with the Vista patch, and it says as much in the "about" dilogue) and it wouldn't install.

The patch installer claims the version of VS is incorrect --  unless it is because of the Vista Patch, it is correct!.

If you could forward this to someone you know, I would be very gratefull!

Thanks for your help!

Hi Gary,

I'm not sure why you ended up getting the SP1 for Vista's version of VS 2005.  When I go to the first of the links shown in my earlier posting and scroll down I see a stack of links for the different VS products.  The first of these is for non-Vista boxes running VS 2005 (standard, pro, team... not express).  This particular link (for me) appears as http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=BB4A75AB-E2D4-4C96-B39D-37BAF6B5B1DC&displaylang=en.  If you go directly there can you get the SP1 for your version of Windows and your version of VS 2005?  If so, grab it, install it, and see if your style sheet still crashes it. :)  Good luck, my friend.

Hi Russ,

 The beta SP for VS 2005 on Vista was in one of the links -- I forget which, but since I have the latest Vista Release from MSDN, it made sense to install it. When it didn't work in the manner I expected, I returned to the same site you linked in your latest message, downloaded the version for VS Pro, and attempted an install. But this failed with an error saying something about my version of VS being incorrect, or non-existant on my machine.

My version, while it is VS Pro, is also an MSDN subscription product (I have a subscription), but this shouldn't effect the patches as far as I know. And I haven't had any crash problems until I started using the control adapters. 

I have more than the java script for the adapters on a web site, I also have script for IE6 in the form of a browser helper which I refer to from pages, and some in-line script to launch a media player in a document window pop-up. 

Since the adapted controls also diferentiate browsers in script and CSS, I wonder if there in lies the issue? Could the seperate scripts be creating some conflict perhaps?

Thoughts? I've already done a repair on the VS install, which didn't help. My next approach would be to completly uninstall VS, and then reinstall and follow-up with the patch.

Thanks for all your help!

Hi Gary, I understand now what happened with your upgrade to SP1.  Yikes.  It sounds like something got messed up (in the registry?) when you tried using the Vista version of the SP1 upgrade for VS initially. Maybe your suggestion of uninstalling and reinstalling VS will work.  I'd give that a shot.  You might also contact some of the VS experts in the appropriate VS-specific forums. Also, try checking around in search engines to see if anyone has reported similar things with the SP1 upgrade (when they've used the Vista version initially by accident or mistake).

I really don't think that the problem has to do with JS or add-ins for your browser, etc.  It really sounds like you are hitting some simple bug in VS.  I understand that SP1 fixes something crazy like 1200 bugs so it really seems like loading it (if you can) is your best first shot at overcoming the crash.

Hi Russ, thanks for your help!  Yes, I'm going to do the uninstall since the SP doesn't even recognize my version of VS.  When that message popped up on my screen, my wife said the veins started to pop up on my neck, and a "tick" developed on my cheek! Sheesh! What an aggrevation!

Interestingly, I've been all over the web, including Google, but I suspect this issue isn't that common. I'll attempt the re-install of VS, and go from there.

I'll let you know the results Saturday.

By the way, in spite of this glitch, I love the control adapters! My wife and I are a team developing web sites, and I develop software for the City, and when we implemented the menu control for the first time and checked the source code that it published for the site, we were very tickled to see it all done for us! What a time saver.

Take care -

Hi Russ

Same issue here.

Seem to be getting the same issue after installing VS2005 SP1, have a nasty feeling it's something to do with Import.css, not sure if it's VS or Adapters related yet, will let you know if I can track down a solution.

Hi Folks, an interesting follow-up related to my dilema:  as I was getting ready to do the uninstall of VS, I noticed an add-in with the other listed items that was called a web application in the software list. I recalled read over on the MSDN site for the VS service pack that you needed to unistall web application add-ins for the service pack to work.

I also noticed that I already had the service pack installed, as well the Vista patch for VS2005, so I uninstalled the web application and rebooted.

So far, I've had no further crashes as I edit the style sheet for the menu.  However, I should say that I haven't tried very hard to test this out, and unfortunately I didn't note the specific web app add-in I removed (I think there are several for use available).

I have not gone any further in doing the uninstall as things seem OK for now, but I'll post back if things change!

Thanks for your assistance, Russ!

Hi Russ,

I don't know if I can reproduce this, but what I can say is that I was working on a site that has multple master pages, style sheets, javascript files, 30 some-odd content pages, media and images; and is still growing.

What was occuring would be crashing VS completely when editing any of the style content from the adapter menu sample css. Just one change, it didn't matter what, when I would save, or attempt to run in a browser, the designer would crash.

As I indicated earlyer, the only erroring code seemed to be coming from the designer dll. But when I re-registered them, it did not help.

I removed a web application that was installed on my machine, and also verified the patch installations.  So far, this seems to be working, but I haven't really tested it well. I'm going to be doing some more tweeking on the menu, so if somethings going to happen, it will most likely be then!

I'll let you know what happens.

Hi Russ

This is regularly occuring when I try to edit the SimpleMenu.Css file. I'm using IE7 and VS2005 SP1.

Sometimes VS2005 just closes down, sometimes I get a message saying VS has encountered an error and needs to restart. Don't think I've changed too much in the stylesheet but below is a copy of it.

1    .SimpleEntertainmentMenu ul.AspNet-Menu /* Tier 1 */
2    {
3        width: 26em; /* This is more than (6em x 2) because we want to leave room for borders around the <li> elements that are selected */
4    }
5    
6    .SimpleEntertainmentMenu ul.AspNet-Menu ul  /* Tier 2 */
7    {
8        width: 6em;
9        top: 100%;
10       left: 0;
11   }
12   
13   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu ul.AspNet-Menu ul ul  /* Tier 3+ */
14   {
15       top: -0.5em;
16       left: 6em;
17   }
18   
19   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li /* all list items */
20   {
21       width: 6em;
22       background: #5d7b9d;
23       color: White;
24   }
25   
26   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li:hover, /* list items being hovered over */
27   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li.AspNet-Menu-Hover
28   {
29       background: Black;
30   }
31   
32   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu a, /* all anchors and spans (nodes with no link) */
33   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu span
34   {
35       color: Black;
36       padding: 4px 2px 4px 8px;
37       border:1px solid #cccccc;
38       background: transparent url(arrowRight.gif) right center no-repeat;
39   }
40   
41   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li.AspNet-Menu-Leaf a, /* leaves */
42   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li.AspNet-Menu-Leaf span
43   {
44       background-image: none !important;
45   }
46   
47   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li:hover a, /* hovered text */
48   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li:hover span,
49   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li.AspNet-Menu-Hover a,
50   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li.AspNet-Menu-Hover span,
51   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li:hover li:hover a,
52   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li:hover li:hover span,
53   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li.AspNet-Menu-Hover li.AspNet-Menu-Hover a,
54   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li.AspNet-Menu-Hover li.AspNet-Menu-Hover span,
55   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li:hover li:hover li:hover a,
56   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li:hover li:hover li:hover span,
57   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li.AspNet-Menu-Hover li.AspNet-Menu-Hover li.AspNet-Menu-Hover a,
58   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li.AspNet-Menu-Hover li.AspNet-Menu-Hover li.AspNet-Menu-Hover span
59   {
60       color: White;
61       background: transparent url(activeArrowRight.gif) right center no-repeat;
62   }
63   
64   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li:hover li a, /* the tier above this one is hovered */
65   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li:hover li span,
66   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li.AspNet-Menu-Hover li a,
67   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li.AspNet-Menu-Hover li span,
68   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li:hover li:hover li a,
69   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li:hover li:hover li span,
70   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li.AspNet-Menu-Hover li.AspNet-Menu-Hover li a,
71   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu li.AspNet-Menu-Hover li.AspNet-Menu-Hover li span
72   {
73       color: Black;
74       background: transparent url(arrowRight.gif) right center no-repeat;
75   }
76   
77   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu .AspNet-Menu-Selected /* this tier is selected */
78   {
79       border: solid 1px #00ff00 !important;
80   }
81   
82   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu .AspNet-Menu-ChildSelected /* a tier below this one is selected */
83   {
84       border: solid 1px #ff0000 !important;
85   }
86   
87   .SimpleEntertainmentMenu .AspNet-Menu-ParentSelected /* a tier above this one is selected */
88   {
89       border: solid 1px #0000ff !important;
90   }
91   
92   #EntertainmentMessage
93   {
94       padding-top: 2em;
95       clear: both;
96   }

Only issue I can think of with this is the background image url's not resolving.

Unfortunately, I've not been able to duplicate the crash in VS.  I tried, using VS2005 SP1, but editing a copy of the stylesheet posted above didn't cause any crash. Is there a way that you could give me a specific recipe for "type this and click that" that would lead me to be able to cause the crash here?  If not, do you have any more clues about what might be going on?  I know that you suspect the unresolved image references. I suppose that could be a problem but I worked with style sheets with unresolved URL references before and they've never caused crashes in VS in my experience.  Still, it's hard to say without more info what the problem might be.  Any crash in VS is due to a bug so it's rather hard to second-guess what exactly that bug is.  If I can get a reproducible recipe I can pass it along to some folks within MS who can do the real diagnostic work.

Happy New Year.

Hi Folks,  just to add to the discussion: I would agree that it seemed most of the problems started when I was manipulating the images -- no one specific; but then, changing colors, font attributes and such certainly crashed the designer also.

I can say that since I last posted indicating things seemed OK, I haven't had a similar crash!  I am of the mind that this resolved once I handled the service pack installation and removed the web application add-in as instructed on the SP web site.

HTH!

Gary

OK, that's good to hear, Gary.  Until I get a reproducible recipe from someone (leading to the crash in VS 2005 SP1) I'm going to be forced to put this whole issue aside.  PLEASE, if anyone continues to see this crash and can give me a step-by-step recipe to reproduce it... post the info here.  THANKS.

I started experiencing this problem today, and came up with a way to reproduce the behavior by hitting CTRL+S to save the file, after it has already been saved.  This crashes my VS every time.  However, I tried this on another computer and couldn't reproduce it.  So it may be something too specific about our configurations.

I'm currently running VS Pro, no Service Pack installed, on Windows XP SP2.  An ASUS motherboard and 2GB of RAM.
 

Hey Russ, All;

I ran into this yet again, but this time it was not  during a change to the menu adapter style sheet, but from a different one for the same site. However, this style sheet is intended for only 2 master pages and their content. The one thing that ties them with the rest of the site, is that the menu from the adapter is embeded on the master page. Now, here is something I neglected to point out in previous a post, but could have some berring:  the menu generated from the adapter and style sheet are in one user control, which is icluded in several seperate master page files.

At the outset, that doesn't seem like it should be a problem, but when I consider that each master page makes a call to the menu style as well layout and content styles on a seperate sheets; and the fact that other java script is embeded in most content pages and master pages, it seems that an error should be generated. Remember, this issue started when I wanted to change style sheet entries, and particularly with images.  I can certainly see the potential for the IDE barking when asked to save the changes. Interestingly though is that even when the IDE crashes and shuts down, it retains the very changes I intended.

At any rate, I'm thinking this has more to do with conflicting script over a lot of content, rather than any specific bug.  I'll need to keep working on this, but our web site is coming right along and the menus are doing a fine job!

I started experiencing this problem a few days ago, am downloading sp1 now. I have experienced it with 2 separate website projects, one which uses the CSS menu adapters and one which does not. The most recent crashes, and the ones I will try to describe a recipe for, concern the site that DOES NOT have the css friendly adapters enabled:

1.) Website with CSS Adapters NOT enabled, though I have installed them for this copy of VS 2005 Pro.
- this means there is no browser file, no adpaters in App_Code, and no default ASP.NET Stylesheets

2.) No custom JavaScript
- the only javascript my site currently uses is that which ASP.NET generates automatically.

3.) One master page
- more on this later

4.) One web form that uses the master page (i.e. an aspx page with a MasterPageFile declaration and an asp:Content container)
-  this page is used to view the master page's css rendering in a couple different browsers.

5.) Four CSS files.
- The first CSS file, named "screen.css", has three @import statements referencing the other three.

This also might be important: I currently have this main screen.css file (the one with the import statements) linked twice from the master page like so:
<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="~/css/screen.css" media="screen" runat="server" />
<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="css/screen.css" media="screen" />
The first link element is the one that will be used in production. It runs at the server so that the path to the css file can be determined dynamically at runtime (i.e. in case a form that uses the master page is not in the root folder). The second link is used only to show these styles when I view the master page, or any forms that use the master page, in design view of the IDE editor.

VS did not start crashing until I moved the CSS to separate files and included the 2 links. What I did was, I started with only the master page and the web form to test the master's css in a couple browsers. All CSS was included in style attributes of elements like div, img, span, etc. When I had the CSS the way I wanted it, I started "moving" the css from the master page into a single CSS file. I would cut the css definitions from the style attributes, paste them into a CSS file, then remove the style attribute from the master page's elements. I did this for every styled element until all the CSS was in the CSS file and there were no style attributes in any elements on the master page. (I also added class and id attributes to link the style definitions from the css file to the elements in the master page).

At this time, there are 3 main files: the master page, the test web form, and a CSS file named screen.css. Also at this time, there are no @import statements in the screen.css file.

What I did here was save screen.css AS master.css. Now I have 2 files, named screen.css and master.css, with identical code, which are in the same folder (~/css). I then edited screen.css, deleted all of its style definitions, and added an @import statement to reference master.css, like so:
/*
This is the entire content of screen.css, which is the only css file
linked from the master page. However, rememebr, it is linked twice.
*/
@import "master.css";
/*
This is the end of the screen.css file. It contains no more code.
*/

This is when the problems started happening. I continued layering my CSS throughout several more stylesheets. I created a new CSS file called "dev.css" which contains styles that are only to be enabled during development, and added an additional @import statement to screen.css (@import "dev.css";). (Note: All of my css files exist in ~/css). Saving screen.css after adding the import statement crashed VSS.

After I got back on my feet, I contined layering the CSS. I created a user control (ascx file) to encapsulate an unordered list (UL element block) that exists on the master page. I cut the whole UL block from the master page, pasted it into the web control, saved, then referenced the web control from the master page. No problems here, yet. However I opened master.css and created a new file called "UnorderedList.css". I cut all the styles pertaining to this UL block from master.css and pasted them into UnorderedList.css. I added another @import statement to screen.css (@import "UnorderedList.css";), saved all, and VS crashed again.

Like Gary says, sometimes VS warns that it's going to crash, sometimes it just disappears. Sometimes it starts back up, other times it doesn't. However, each time, the embedded web server keeps running, and whatever browsers were opened from the IDE do not automatically close.

Another note: it might look here like saving screen.css, the one with the @import statements, is what is causing the crashes. I don't think this is the case, because of the other web application that I experienced this problem with. This other website did have the css adapters installed, but I was doing the same exact thing there (systematically distributing the CSS into layers with 2 <link /> tags in the master page). While editing that site, I could cut a single CSS class definition from one file, paste it into another, and save them both to cause a crash. This was done without editing or saving the CSS file with the @import statements.

Additionally, I had my master page opened in the designer (mainly using Source view, but sometimes Design view) when these crashes occurred. Hopefully sp1 will resolve this for me...