I wanted to try Microsoft’s Visual Web Developer Express. Frankly, I think that Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 might be a little bit like using a sledgehammer to kill a fly based for many of my daily website development tasks. Sure, if I’m building a new site from scratch, or doing a major site overhaul, Dreamweaver’s tools can’t be beat, but if I’m going through a dozen small sites to update the copyright notice to include 2009, it seems like a bit much.
But, I never got to try Visual Web Developer Express. It kept freezing up. I never got far enough to even see what it looks like other than the home screen which uses feeds to make sure all of the latest Microsoft headlines are there front and center. Too bad I already have an RSS feed reader capable of viewing feeds from places other than just Microsoft.
This morning, I clicked Website on the toolbar. That is it. Nothing too exciting. Of course, I’ve typed this whole post up to here, and Visual Web Developer Express still hasn’t finished processing the click. I don’t even know what the menu items are.
I’ve done some troubleshooting, but this is the sixth or seventh time that I’ve tried to start up the program when I had a little bit of free time, and every single one of those times I have tried to do something different, and every single one of those times, I have had to give up and end it with CTRL-ALT-DELETE and terminating its process in Process Explorer.
Frankly, I should be able to look at the menus no matter what is going on with my computer, so me and my PC are now going to be rid of Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express and Microsoft will have missed out on a chance for me to evaluate its Internet development product for another six months or a year.
Unless I find another application I like in the meantime, in which case, it may never get another chance.
FAIL.