How important design mode support in Coolite for you

[Vladimir]

<DIV id=result_box dir=ltr>Hello everyone,

I would be very grateful if you share one's your opinions: How important to you design mode support in Coolite toolkite? How often do you use design mode of VS in its developers activities?

Thanks in advance

[dukefama]

Sincerely, In my own opinion, I feel design time support is for people who are more like trying to get in the mix of things. I work mostly in HTML mode. It is not very comfortable but it is faster and more effective and it shows you a loot of stuff you might not even notice in the documentation. It is like working in MS word with the reveal codes on, you find things faster that way.
Conclusion, I hardly use design time support.

[cecilphillip]

I'm a fairly new asp.net developer; less than year w/ asp.net but over 3 with C# and client side .net apps. For me the design time tools are a 50-50. I almost never rely on the design time support solely. I believe a healthy balance of both source editing and automated tools are essential, especially for projects with strict time restraints.

The automated design tools definitelly give me the ability to put together a quick proof of concept. Yet, I always end up editing source just as equality. I suppose its really depends on the developer and what he/she is more efficient with. A lot of time I find the generated code contains unneed declarations (unneed for some of my purposes anyway ) and results in your application being heavier than it needs to be.

Design time support is very important for early adopters since it gives them an introduction to the power of the tools in question. The easier the components are to use, the more inclined the early adopters would be willing to use them again and again (thats how this newbie got into this web development thing in the first place). Then, they will eventually find thier healthy balance of source editing and design time automation.

Hope this helps......

[Chelonian]

I usually dont use nor like the design view in Visual Studio. It usually gives you crappy code and messes up all the source code in a page.

[mthakershi]

Design mode is extremely important. With all respect, no matter what these 'notepad' experts say, this product without full design-time support is worthless for 99% of programming community.

Just my opinion based on around 100 ASP.NET programmers I know. Thank you.

[jchau]

I think Design Mode Support should not be top priority in regards to getting new versions out. The reason is that Design Mode Support is not necessary when using the controls. To some, it's an extra nice feature but I think it's safe to say most experienced programmers can use the Source View to accomplish the same thing. I personally never switch to Design View because it's slow and useless.

[mthakershi]

<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Bottom-line: most programmers are not experts. If the product is to become commercially viable (if that is the goal at all), it has to have 100% design mode support. Nothing against anyone who exclusively use 'source view' but without designer support this will be just one of the many partially complete gizmos on the web.

[jchau]

mthakershi (4/25/2008)
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Bottom-line: most programmers are not experts. If the product is to become commercially viable (if that is the goal at all), it has to have 100% design mode support. Nothing against anyone who exclusively use 'source view' but without designer support this will be just one of the many partially complete gizmos on the web.

I totally agree that in the end, 100% design mode support is needed. But initially, I rather Coolite focus on getting their controls released and worry about design mode support later. For example, I don't want to wait an extra month for the the grid control because they have to put in design mode support. Top priority should be to convert the extjs controls to .NET counterparts with the main functionalities.

[tongyang]

I'll be honest. I don't use design view at all.

[Masher]

I like design mode a lot and I certainly think it should be included for every control, but I don't think it should hold up the release cycle if it's possible to include a working control without it. In that situation people who aren't bothered about having the designer get the control, and those who are waiting for the designer wouldn't see it anyway. The only thing to worry about is delaying the visual designer elements in favour of the control when they could really be completed.

If however you think you could have all of Ext covered a year faster with no designer elements then I'd be tempted to think again.