As a fan of NUnit, I'm particularly excited about all the unit testing functionality built in to the VS 2005 IDE via Team Systems.  Even an ASP.NET UI becomes easy to test now with the Web Test Recorder.

Read all about Web Tests on MSDN.  (spotted via Andrew Stopford)

--Marcie

One thing that is tripping up some people who are upgrading their VS 2003 Datagrid code to use the VS 2005 GridView is that invisible columns can no longer be used for passing data around.  Polita Huff explains the reasoning behind that change (for security reasons) here.

There are (at least) 2 workarounds for this issue, if you've depended on this functionality in the past.

1) If you're using invisible column data before a PostBack to determine something, say, during the ItemDataBound event, you can just use the DataItem property of the Item you're working with.

Old code:

If CType(e.Item.Cells(7).Text, Boolean) Then
   e.Item.Cells(3).Text = "Owner"
Else
   e.Item.Cells(3).Text = "Not an Owner"
End If

Change to:

Dim drv As System.Data.DataRowView = CType(e.Item.DataItem, System.Data.DataRowView)
If CType(drv("IsOwner"), Boolean) Then
   e.Item.Cells(3).Text = "Owner"
Else
   e.Item.Cells(3).Text = "Not an Owner"
End If

2) If you need that invisible data after a PostBack, use the new DataKeyNames property of the GridView (similar to DataKeyField in ASP.NET 1.1, but it now supports multiple columns).  Note that when you use DataKeyNames, the page will automatically decide to encrypt your ViewState (ControlState) to help protect those values, as it assumes your primary key data is potentially secure information.

-- Marcie

Microsoft has come come out with an Upgrade Guide for moving to VS2005

Official Summary: Avoid pitfalls in the upgrading process with these best practices for converting Web projects in Visual Studio 2005. (14 printed pages)

GridViewGirl Summary:  Try it.  If you get errors, fix them. 

That's pretty much all the article says, and that's all you really need to know.  Oh, and backup first.

"If the application you are converting is of reasonable size and has several Web projects and additional projects, such as class libraries, in a single Visual Studio solution, it is possible to encounter issues during migration. Be prepared to spend the better part of a day completing the entire process. The steps and guidance provided in this article can help an informed user to migrate most applications of medium complexity."

I just got done upgrading an app "of reasonable size", and their time estimate was about right.  Most of the issues I encountered weren't covered by this article though.  More on that soon...

--Marcie

When VS 2002 was first coming out, I was a Classic ASP w/VB6 COM developer, used to doing the ASP part of my work in TextPad, so I started off doing all of my ASP.NET in TextPad as well.  It was painful for a while, but it did help me (force me) to learn all the syntax the hard way, using the Class Browser, Reflector, and MSDN.  It was fun to see the look of horror on the faces of my audience in my early Datagrid presentations, where I presented using TextPad as well.  Finally I switched over to using VS2002/2003 as I worked with clients who were using it, and while I didn't feel like I *needed* the Intellisense, it was nice to have, and sometimes sped up the process, since I didn't have to hit the references as much. 

Now it's two years later and I'm hooked on Intellisense like a crack addict.  I'll be typing an email or a post on the ASP.NET forums, and if I type System (DOT) and nothing comes up, I feel naked and alone.  Or in VS.NET, if Intellisense lags a little bit (because I'm running 94 other apps at the same time, and sucking down RAM), I'll type the period and wait for that next name to popup, even though I could have typed it myself while I sat there and waited.  Plus I email a good bit from my Pocket PC, which has its own flavor of Intellisense, guessing (sometimes poorly) which word I'm choosing next.

So imagine my giddiness today when working on a VS 2005 project, and see the Intellisense delight appear in the Watch window:

It also looks like Intellisense got better in the ASPX/ASCX files as well.  Intellisense everywhere, Intellisense for all!

Now I'm waiting for dasBlog Intellisense to guess what I want type for the rest of this post...

--Marcie