Hello,

I am using VS 2005 since two years. And now trying VS 2008.
I found so many bugs or I can say problems during desingin of my web page like
 -desiner gets hanged,
 -Slow saving process,
 -Not able to see user control if it is placed inside update Panel,
 -If many controls are placed on page I have to press enter after every placement of new control or text Other wise it doesnt apear.
 - and So many probs...
I am just not able to work with this...
I also find many limitations with newer versions like Im not able to select more than one control at a time in designer and so on.

I just wanna know whats wrong with VS?
What to do? Im not able to build sites with Framework 3.5.

I'm with you.  Not sure how such a buggy product gets released...  Its gotten to be anymore that we just assume the first release is going to be crap.  I should have just waited for the 1st service pack...

How many programmers does it take to put out a good product?  ANSWER:  1 more than Microsoft has at the moment

Agree. I have actually gone back to VS2005(luckily the project was started with framework 2) to do web design work as it takes 2x as long in VS2008.

Agree,VS2008 has many bugs

Here is my experience with 2008.

 First, don't run it on Vista, because Vista sucks.  Not a VS 2008 issue, except that Vista was also created by Microsoft and someone from the VS 2008 team should tell the Vista team they suck and quit screwing developers that are using Visual Studio products. 

Second, the 3 year release cycle that MS is trying to do is crap.  Fix the current products and make them usable, instead of trying to meet a dumb 3 year release cycle that screws every developer and every corporation in the world because of ramp up and migration  costs, etc.  VS 2005 had 1 service pack, you had to live with the rest of the buggy stuff.

Third, I do like the integrated Designer, although it is buggy and you can't rely on it, it does help with CSS better.  (which is the result of Expressions Web product).  One thing that upsets me about doing any sort of design with VS 2008 is not necessary the product, but the browser.  IE 7.0 is slow as heck compared to firefox, so when I do have to run the app because I'm doing design and the designer doesn't work, it is SLOW.  Also, I have to double check my work with firefox anyway because IE doesn't follow CSS standards which is another problem I have with MS.

Finally, I think VS 2008 is just as buggy as VS 2005, (some things were not even fixed from 2005), so as a result, you might as well make the jump to 2008 to get the javascript debugger and the better CSS support.  And if you have Vista, get rid of it because it sucks when you try to use any Visual Studio Development tool.

It is a sad day when you have to make a decision on what is the least worst product to use.  Unfortunately Microsoft is putting us into this situation with Vista and Internet Explorer 7.0.  Those products are far from meeting the old Microsoft standards and they will eventually tick off enough people to shift browsers.

I completely agree with every point.

Vista is unusable.  I won't continue to beat that dead horse.  MS better throw something out there quick or Vista will be the death of the MS OS dominance.  And the end of MS OS dominance might mean the death of .Net, which would mean the death of reasonably efficient web development.

VS2008 is VS2005, all the same 2005 bugs.  VS2008 does have nice javascript support, so it may be worth moving just for that.

IE7 is a dog compared to FireFox, and I suggest using FireFox as the default browser to all my clients that will listen.  Especially for intranet sites that involve lots of Ajax and Javascript.  Firefox smokes IE7 on these sites.  Try it and you'll see.

The 3 year development cycle pisses off every one of my clients.  By the time they get up to speed on a product and learn and/or work around all it's bugs, there's another release on the horizon that will invariably contain even more bugs, and in the case of VS2008, doesn't even fix the existing ones.

I'm always hearing about how MS is looking for ways to invest all it's cash.

Here's an idea.  How about hiring good developers.  Pay whatever it takes.  Their quality is so obviously sliding.  If offshoring the development is what's going on (and I highly suspect it is), then stop that immediately or figure out how to keep the quaility up.

For those interested, a while ago ScottGu published a series of blog posts on the product release process.

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2004/10/28/249458.aspx

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2004/11/14/257314.aspx

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2004/10/23/246709.aspx

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2003/02/16/2493.aspx

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2003/02/21/2743.aspx

99% of development is in Redmond. And yes, it is hard to hire (amount of pay is not necessarily a deciding factor here). Software complexity and large set of user scenarios are biggest contributors to the perceived quality, not really a number of people involved in the product development.  BTW, teams have goals to fix bugs filed on Connect, therefore please file bugs so teams can see issues.

Mikhail Arkhipov (MSFT):

Software complexity and large set of user scenarios are biggest contributors to the perceived quality, not really a number of people involved in the product development.  BTW, teams have goals to fix bugs filed on Connect, therefore please file bugs so teams can see issues.

 I want to follow-up with this.  You are taking the position to defend Microsoft and the VS product development and I can respect that position, however, the complaints go beyond the bugs for me.  My complaint stems from VS 2005 not getting any love from you guys and moving onto the next version.  So developers were using VS 2005 were getting pissed off, but greatly anticipating the next release in the hopes that we will have a more stable environment for development.  NOT SO.  Instead, we get a new product that is just as buggy as 2005, and we are pissed off about it.  I am upset over this attitude of Microsoft and this isn't only in the Visual Studio team, this deals with Vista, IE, Office, etc.    Just once I would like to see a post from Microsoft that says we screwed up with <Product> and we are working to fix the screw up.  Instead all I hear is <Product> is the best!! and in 3 years we will have something else that is buggy as hell for you to work on.  

Please try to believe me, I am a huge Microsoft fan and maybe that is why I am writing these posts, because over the last 2 years, I have seen a major quality issue as well as a pompous attitude with your products.  IE and Vista are a prime example of this attitude. Vista is horrible and I haven't seen a corporation want to deploy Vista yet.  IE is slow, crashes frequently, and doesn't follow CSS standards, which makes development twice as long and a freaking nightmare. 

So unfortunately, you are face of MS on these boards and get beat up by us.  I do appreciate someone from Microsoft that cares enough about what people think to monitor these boards and help us out.  But I do hope that someone at MS takes these comments into consideration when making decisions about future products.  As a Microsoft fan, I am upset about the direction that Microsoft is going.

Thanks

If it's hard to find developers that can handle the complexity then I would suggest slowing down the release cycle.  I've never been at a client where I've got the comment "we're not considering .Net because their release cycle is too slow".  What I do hear is "we can't move to 2008 because we haven't even got all our apps to 2005 yet".

There is a very real perception now that quality is sliding on the OS (Vista) and Visual Studio.  There may be other ones, but those are the products I consistently hear frustration on.  Vista much much more than VS though.  Visual Studio 2003 was fantastic, and it just seems that 2005 never caught up.  And now we have 2008, and most the 2005 problems are still there.

To end on a positive note, the javascript debugging is great, and will greatly increase my productivity.  I'm frustrated with VS 2005/2008, but can live with little issues.  I'm very frightened however by the problems with Vista.  None of my current four clients have any plans to move from XP, and they're all fearful they'll be forced to move at some point.

I keep trying to use VS08, but it keeps doing it's best to stop me. Most of the time I find myself back in VS05 - it's quicker & doesn't have the new bugs introduced in VS08.

 I cannot for the life of me get my web apps working properly in VS08. They worked in 03, 05 but not 08 apparantly. Thanks for that.