Figure 6: The Project Deployment Explorer  


      Visual InterDev also contains the Document Outline page and the Project Deployment Explorer. You can control a site from this Explorer, and change deployment mode in a click (see Figure 6).

Version Control and Team Work

      Any serious developer (and many not-so-serious ones) knows that you cannot effectively work without version control. Visual InterDev 6.0, like the other tools in Visual Studio, is well-integrated with SourceSafe® and work can be transparently versioned. This makes team programming much, much safer. Unfortunately, FrontPage 2000 does not ship with this important component. At press time, I am unaware of any third-party solution that can easily be connected to a team using FrontPage 2000.


Page Deployment

      You often do not really need to be connected to the Web server while editing pages. It's enough to work on local copies, modify them, and then deploy them in a batch to the server. Your editor should support optional deployment.
      Visual InterDev offers two editing modes: local and master. While working in local mode you save pages to a local folder, which is automatically created when you add a new project (like Visual C++ does when you start a new project). You don't need to have continuous access to a Web server. You can connect to the Web server once, load copies of all the necessary files, and disconnect. You can even cancel changes made to pages using the Discard Changes command (see Figure 7). Now you're ready to work with local copies. Once you've updated the site, you can use the Deployment Explorer to select the server's location and deploy the changed files.



      Figure 7: Discarding Changes in Visual InterDev 6.0  


      In master mode, you save files directly to the server. This can be useful and save overhead if you have small changes to make to one or two files. You can also work in offline mode. This works just like local mode, except that your project tree is automatically updated when you go to master mode.


      Figure 8: Publishing a Web Site in FrontPage 2000  


      FrontPage 2000 lets you publish a Web site similarly to Visual InterDev, but it doesn't offer the same concept of local/master mode (see Figure 8).

Importing External Sites

      FrontPage 2000 can import external sites using its Import Web Wizard. If you have an old site or a site that was created without Microsoft tools (and FrontPage extensions), you can import it into FrontPage and save it as a native project. You can choose to import only text pages and images or all files (see Figure 9).



      Figure 9: Import Web Wizard in FrontPage 2000  


      Visual InterDev can import sites too, but they must be created using FrontPage extensions. With FrontPage extensions, some utility files with descriptions of the site structure are available in a site subdirectory; the Import Wizard reads the site structure and imports all the files that are mentioned.

Integrated Debugging

      As a longtime developer, I love advanced debuggers. I grew up using CodeView® and integrated debuggers in Visual C++. Visual InterDev is enjoyable to use because its debugger is similar to the one in Visual C++, with standard features like breakpoints, locals view, stack view, and so on. You can even perform debugging of server-side pages if y