Here's a scenario An ASP.NET application has a page with 2 UserControls, "ucA" and "ucB". Both ucA and ucB have coding errors. Only ucA is open in the editor.
In VS 2003, the Error List would show errors from both ucA and ucB, even though ucB was not open. The Error List would be fully updated when you attempted to build. This was a pain to some people, but I liked it.
In VS2005, the Error List only shows errors from ucA, the one that is open in the editor. Errors from ucB do not show in the Error List, unless you build. But with .NET 2.0, we don't have to build an ASP.NET application. In fact, in some cases that may not be desirable.
So, you fix the errors from the List in ucA. You don't see the errors from ucB until you try to run your web page, and it crashes. Weed through the stack trace to see that it was ucB that failed. Open ucB in the editor, and the Error List is built.
Is there any way to get VS 2005 to dispaly all the errors from all pages and controls, without having to open them all in the editor? Not a problem with my example of one page with 2 controls. But my real world has over 900 pages and controls, and it's a major pain not to have a full Error List, and have it crash at runtime.
Maybe in VS 2008 they could put in an option to show errors from all files or in open files only?
David Haggard
NewCovenant Consulting