This is feedback on my first impression of Web Developer 2010. I hope Microsoft reads this and improves the product (or tells me what I'm doing wrong). The short version - I threw it out and went back to Front Page 2003! Here are
my observations:
1) When I move a file (or rename it) in the solution explorer, Web Developer does not update all the references. It's smart enough to know the file (probably a picture) doesn't exist, but not smart enough to update all the links that reference it,
like Front Page did. This makes it pretty much useless, as I can't reorganize my web. BTW, C# Express 2008 is very good at keeping things in line, especially with refactoring the code.
2) I never got absolute paths in master pages to work properly. For example, I want all my images in a folder called images. Then in the master page, no mater how I referenced the file, it wasn't found by the page that was merged. I tried
using "images/myimage.jpg", "/images/myimage.jpg", and "~/images/myimage.jpg". BTW, the merged pages were located in sub-directories, so this might have been a factor but it should still work if the path is absolute.
3) The .SLN file was created in one place (wherever Web Developer decided to put it - under some subfolder created by the program), and the web site was created in a completely different place (where I told it to go). IMO, the .SLN file should be placed
with the web site, just like Visual C# Express does.
4) The final problem might only be with Web Developer 2008 because I never got to the point of uploading the project with 2010 (because of the above problems). Web Developer 2008 kept hanging while copying the web site via FTP. It's probably
a problem with the FTP server because Front Page would also stop uploading sometimes, but at least it wouldn't hang the program!
I am not happy with Web Developer 2010 Express at all, and will not try it again until these problems are fixed.
-Jeremy
