{"id":860,"date":"2003-11-27T23:50:16","date_gmt":"2003-11-27T23:50:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sunpig.com\/mt-entry-860.html"},"modified":"2006-09-23T19:30:11","modified_gmt":"2006-09-23T19:30:11","slug":"html-with-visual-studionet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/2003\/11\/27\/html-with-visual-studionet\/","title":{"rendered":"HTML with Visual Studio.NET"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Generally, Microsoft&#8217;s Visual Studio.NET is a pleasure to work with.  However, there is one area where it falls down <em>really badly<\/em>, and that&#8217;s as an HTML editor.  ASP.NET is brilliant, web controls are great, and VS.NET is just swell at writing the code that sits <em>behind<\/em> a web app.  But does it allow you to produce nicely formatted, standards-compliant HTML?  Does it hell.<\/p>\n<p>Spend ages getting all the tags on a page nicely indented and WATCH with TERROR as it reformats the page with bizarre line breaks and random spacing.<\/p>\n<p>Get your markup ready for validation, then WEEP in AGONY as all your hand-crafted XHTML is turned into puddles of steaming donkey vomit.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re talking horror of Lovecraftian proportions here, folks.  <code>&lt;span class=\"label\"&gt;Great Cthulhu&lt;span&gt;<\/code>?  Surely you meant to say <code>&lt;SPAN class=label&gt;Great Cthulhu&lt;SPAN&gt;<\/code>.  Here, let me correct that for you&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t mind that it&#8217;s doesn&#8217;t produce valid XHTML by default.  I <em>do<\/em> mind that it won&#8217;t let me write markup the way I want to.  Hidden deep in the guts of Visual Studio&#8217;s configuration settings there is a &#8220;Stop Fucking With My Code&#8221; option, but apparently it&#8217;s only there for decorative purposes.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>However&#8230;.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Earlier this week Scott Guthrie, the lead architect\/product manager for ASP.NET, <a href=\"http:\/\/weblogs.asp.net\/scottgu\/posts\/39620.aspx\">made some interesting accouncements<\/a> on his blog about XHTML and accessibility standards compliance in ASP.NET 2 and the next version of Visual Studio (&#8220;Whidbey&#8221;).  A white paper on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.asp.net\/\">www.asp.net<\/a> goes into some <a href=\"http:\/\/www.asp.net\/whidbey\/whitepapers\/VSWhidbeyOverview.aspx\">more details<\/a> about these, and other features.  Here&#8217;s one of the bits I <em>really<\/em> like:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"http:\/\/www.asp.net\/whidbey\/whitepapers\/VSWhidbeyOverview.aspx\"><p><strong>HTML Source Preservation<\/strong><br \/>\n<br \/>\nVisual Studio &#8220;Whidbey&#8221; respects your HTML. The formatting of your HTML markup &#8212; including all white space, casing, indention, carriage returns, and word wrapping &#8212; is now preserved exactly as originally written, even when switching back and forth between the design view and source view of the page. You can completely trust Visual Studio &#8220;Whidbey&#8221; to never modify your markup. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yay!  There&#8217;s a lot more cool stuff coming in ASP.NET 2, too.  Unfortunately there&#8217;s still a long time to wait&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this week Scott Guthrie, the lead architect\/product manager for ASP.NET, <a href=\"http:\/\/weblogs.asp.net\/scottgu\/posts\/39620.aspx\">made some interesting accouncements<\/a> on his blog about XHTML and accessibility standards compliance in ASP.NET 2 and the next version of Visual Studio (&#8220;Whidbey&#8221;).  A white paper on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.asp.net\/\">www.asp.net<\/a> goes into some <a href=\"http:\/\/www.asp.net\/whidbey\/whitepapers\/VSWhidbeyOverview.aspx\">more details<\/a> about these, and other features.  Here&#8217;s one of the bits I <em>really<\/em> like:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-techie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}