I've just started playing around with the Whidbey IDE, and I'm really having some trouble finding a lot of features that are in VS.Net 2003. Perhaps someone could point me to where they are at in Whidbey, or explain why they no longer exist?
1) Project Properties
In VS.Net 2003, I can right-click on a web project and click "Properties" to get to a dialog that allows me to set dozens of project-related properties. These include the default namespace, the assembly name, the designer settings, and the build and debugging options. In Whidbey however, when I right-click on a web project and click "Properties", all I get is a dialog that allows me to view and edit the references for the project. How do I get the project properties dialog in Whidbey? Also, why aren't the project references simply listed as a node in the solution explorer like they are in VS.Net 2003?
2) Inability to Hide/Exclude Files
VS.Net 2003 automatically hides code-behind files for ASP.Net pages, which makes the solution explorer much less cluttered. However, in Whidbey, there doesn't seem to be a way to do this. I effectively see twice as many files as I need to. Is there a reason for this?
Also, VS.Net 2003 allows me to exclude certain files from the project, which is very useful for hiding non-project-related files that happened to be in the same physical directory as my website. This feature doesn't appear to be in Whidbey either.
3) Inability to Set Project Names
In VS.Net 2003, I can give my projects meaningful names, which makes the solution explorer easier to navigate. However, Whidbey always displays the full path to the project rather than a user-friendly project name, which makes the solution explorer more difficult to use, and forces me to scroll horizontally because project paths tend to be pretty long.
4) Default Namespaces and Class Names Are Useless
VS.Net 2003 allows me to set the default namespace for my project, and then it automatically sets the namespace for any new classes or pages I created based on the default namespace + the folder structure of my site. However, Whidbey always assigns new classes the namespace "ASP", regardless of where they exist in my directory structure. Not only does this force me to manually edit the namespace of each new page I create, but it also contradicts Microsoft's own
naming guidelines.
Also, whenever I create a new page in VS.Net 2003, the corresponding class is given the same name as the page, but without the extension. This is almost always the desired behavior. However, in Whidbey, the class names that are created for new pages always include and underscore followed by the page extension. Not only does this result in ugly class names, but it directly contradicts Microsoft's own
naming guidelines.
Anyway... these are just a few things that I've noticed after a couple hours of playing around with Whidbey. Don't get me wrong though... overall, I think this is shaping up to be a tremendous tool.