The White Screen of Darn
DDJ: Is that the "White Screen of Darn" (WSOD) issue? (See Figure 1.)
Bill V.: Yes, that's the "White Screen of Darn".
DDJ: What are some recommendations on ways to get back from the WSOD? I run into that one a lot myself.
Billy H.:That one is the most baffling to me. It seems so intermittent, and there doesn't seem to be anything specific that causes it. But, restarting the IDE seems to fix it.
Kathleen: The ability to go into the Windows Forms designer generated code is required. For example, with the form that eats the TreeView instantiation.
DDJ: That's the file that shows up in the Solution Explorer under the form file, the one that's hidden in VB projects? (See Figure 2.)
Kathleen: Right.
Bill V.: I've found that if I wear white socks, the problems don't happen nearly as often.
(laughter)
DDJ: For me, it's in working with user controls. When you're developing user controls, it's inevitable that you will modify the interface to the control. You'll rename properties, for example. If this control is sited on a form, then the designer generated code in that form will no longer be valid. When this happens, the form will no longer open in the designer. To get the form to open again, you have to go into the designer file that says all over it, "Designer generated, don't modify this!" You have to modify that code to fix the problem and get your form showing again. In the past, if there was a problem with a user control you could still at least see the form. The user control would show up with a red "X". You could delete the control, and re-add it, and probably fix the problem.
Kathleen: I've been lucky in the mentoring stuff I do that we don't have to go into that file very often. Unfortunately at this stage, even with folks new to .NET, you can't pretend that the designer file doesn't exist. You absolutely will have to go in there from time to time to fix problems.
DDJ: Just to narrow this down, some people are running third-party products, but there are still issues even if you're running a clean load of Visual Studio, with nothing third-party installed, correct?
Bill V.: I'm still seeing issues without anything third-party installed.
DDJ: It can't be attributed to beta debris. I can't be attributed to third-party products. Those might exacerbate the problem, but even without those, there's significant instability. Is it possible that maybe this is a perception issue? Is it possible that Visual Studio 2005 is really just as stable as any other release of Visual Studio? When the previous version shipped, blogging hadn't taken off. Every time someone found a bug, it didn't get broadcast around the world. Is blogging the problem? Has it just created an impression that the product is less stable than previous releases, or is there really something different about this one?
Kathleen: It's different with this one.
Rocky: I think it has to be put in perspective. I think it's roughly comparable to the very first version of Visual Studio .NET.
Bill V.: I was about to say the same thing.
Rocky: I think it's quite similar to the original Visual Studio .NET. But then the next version, Visual Studio 2003, had to be one of the best releases for stability that Microsoft has ever done. It just came out of the gate really solid.
Bill V.: 2003 didn't have a lot of new features, but they really did stabilize the product with that release.
Rocky: Yep, I agree. I think the blogging makes it seem worse than it is. And if you're like me, and you get hit with some beta debris, it's really bad. But, having fixed that, and hopefully after I install the hotfix, I'm hoping that almost all of my common issues will be solved.
Kathleen: I did not personally have as many problems with the original Visual Studio .NET as I'm having with Visual Studio 2005. Maybe I'm banging on the product differently now, but I did not have to close and reopen Visual Studio nearly as often. I don't think it crashed as often. And the weird stuff, like having a dialog appear on the left, when it's docked on the right, and then when I click on it and give it focus, it pops back over to the right where it's supposed to be. I don't recall seeing that kind of weird stuff in the original Visual Studio .NET. Now, I did switch to 2003 as quickly as I could, so it's possible that there were more problems than I'm remembering. It's a matter of degree. To me, it's somewhat less stable than the original Visual Studio .NET, and no where nearly as stable as Visual Studio .NET 2003.
Billy H.:I have to pretty much come in at the same level as Kathleen. I did a lot of production work in the original Visual Studio .NET, and my recollection is that I'd have to restart the IDE to get it to regain its sanity maybe twice a week. With Visual Studio 2005, it's more like twice a day.
