Turnersville, NJ—For those of us who use Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, suffering is a part of life, well, that is, unless you use the workflow that Microsoft shoves down your throat.
Let me briefly explain. Microsoft wants web developers to host their development sites on their development box, using the hobbled version of IIS that ships with Windows, and then when the project (or work day) is done, do a single copy up to the server.
But there are plenty of times this is impractical. For example, though this workflow is relatively convenient, it requires additional setup. There are plenty of times that I would like to work on the files locally, but transfer them to a remote development site for testing and preview. The problem is that the FTP support in Visual Studio 2005 is woefully inadequate, especially considering the size of the company that produces the product, and the maturity of the product itself.
Enter "dispatch", available from yellowcup, available for download at http://dispatchasp.net. The plugin for Visual Studio 2005 is currently in beta, but is very stable. This beauty adds real, fast FTP support to VS 2005. Here are some of the features that make it a "must have" application:
- One-click uploading
- Supports both C# & VB.net / Vista, XP & Windows 2k3
- Compare project files against local upload log
- Compare project files against files on FTP server
- Actively track changed items
- View all remote files/folders on top of your project
- Ignore files & folders using filters like *.pdb & *.sln
- Familiar interface, similar to Solution Explorer
- Complete integration with Visual Studio 2005
- Supports multiple web projects
- Auto Update will ensure you're using the latest version
- Keyboard combo to perform a transfer quickly!
If you're a .NET web developer, I
highly recommend that you check out this add-on. I welcome your comments.