You can use the Visual Studio 2005 IDE to edit your Classic ASP files and still utilize syntax highlighting and intellisense. All you have to do is associate the “.asp“ file extension with the Web Form Editor. When doing this you are telling the IDE to treat “.asp“ files the same as “.aspx“ files, in turn sort of “tricking“ the IDE in to giving you the syntax highlighting and intellisense that you want.

The steps in setting up the IDE are as follows:

1. Open Visual Studio
2. Goto the "Tools" menu and click "Options..."
3. Check the "Show all options" checkbox in the bottom left of the dialog box.
4. In the right pane expand "Text Editor" and select "File Extension"
5. Enter "ASP" extension in the "Extension" textbox
6. Select "Web Form Editor" in the Editor dropdown box
7. Click the "Add" button and click "Ok" on the dialog box.

And now enjoy all the syntax highlighting and intellisense features for JavaScript, HTML and Visual Basic while editing your Classic ASP files.

If you attend Microsoft's Best of Visual Studio 2005 Launch or Microsoft's Best of SQL Server 2005 Launch and you'll receive a free copy of Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition and SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition.

VS '05 Launch - http://msdnevents.com/launch
SQL Server '05 Launch - http://technetevents.com/launch

This is another great episode of The .NET Rocks show. This weeks episode is all about writing Web Controls in ASP.NET. I think this is one of the more advanced topics they've covered on the show. I listened to it a couple times and since I don't author too many user controls, I think I'll have to play with more of the stuff they discuss.

Miguel Castro on Web Controls
Carl and Richard run into Miguel Castro at a hotel bar at the MVP Summit 2005 in Bellevue, WA. This is the first real show we've done on Web Controls, and it has been a long time coming. There is so much technical information in this show you'll have to listen several times at possibly a slower speed.

Link: http://dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showID=136