I'm not sure this is the right forum, but after installing VS2008 I noticed all my CSS classes are underlined in green in my User Controls.  I have VS Pro version 9.0.21022.8 installed, but all my projects and websites were created using 2005.  Is this a known issue, or something new with VS 2008?

Also, in case it matters, my style sheets are stored in my App_Themes folder.

Thanks

Usercontrols don't have allow you to link stylesheets so VS2008 doesn't see them properly. I dynamically add a link element to the head of any page that uses my usercontrols and I also get the green underlines. This feature definitely needs some improvement.

FWIW, I am seeing the same thing in aspx content pages that have master pages. My css files are also in App_Theme folder. Sometimes the css class are recognized and the green lines go away, sometimes it suddenly reappears.

Cheers,

Bill

Has anyone heard of a possible solution, or should we just wait for a fix from MS?

VS 2005 did not have class name validation and therefore class names were not flagged, so it is not like something got broken since VS 2005. VS 2008 validates class names against attached stylesheets, but since designer does not know where user control may be included, it does not know which stylesheet to use. You can temporary attach <link> elements in the user control pointing to the right stylesheet and comment it out when you are done working with styles. Or you can try switching off CSS validation in Tools | Options.

Mikhail Arkhipov (MSFT):

You can temporary attach <link> elements in the user control pointing to the right stylesheet and comment it out when you are done working with styles.

Would be nice if vs could get the stylesheet information out of a commented section or from some special marked section (so no need to brother to accidentally leave the stylesheet in a wrong place).

This solution could be similar to javascript intellisense references.

Yes, we are thinking about adding something like this in the next version so you'll be able to reference stylesheets from user controls at design time.

Next version? You mean Visual Studio 2012?

This would be a nice feature for sure. But in the mean time its simple enough to add the link to the containing page in the OnInit method. 

protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e)
{
	base.OnInit(e);

	// Add reference to css stylesheet
	HtmlLink link = new HtmlLink();
	link.Href = "PathToStyleSheet.css";
	link.Attributes.Add("type", "text/css");
	link.Attributes.Add("rel", "stylesheet");
	Page.Header.Controls.Add(link);
}

This won't fix the designer since server code is not running at design time.