INFO: Visual Studio 6.0 SP3 Readme: Part 6 - Visual InterDev

ID: Q230730


The information in this article applies to:


SUMMARY

This Readme file contains updated information for the entire Microsoft Visual Studio suite of developer tools. If you downloaded a Core service pack from the Internet, not all sections of this file apply to the updates you received. The fixed issues appropriate for the Core downloads are those listed in the Visual Studio section plus the sections for the products updated by your Core download.

The Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 Service Pack 3 Readme contains the following sections:

PART 1: Overview and Installation

PART 2: Visual Studio

PART 3: Visual Basic

PART 4: Visual C++

PART 5: Visual FoxPro

PART 6: Visual InterDev

PART 7: Visual J++

PART 8: Visual SourceSafe

PART 9: File Versions

For the latest product information, see the Visual Studio Web site at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio

For the latest product updates, see the Visual Studio Support Highlights site at:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/vstudio

For the latest year 2000 information regarding Microsoft products, see the Microsoft Year 2000 Readiness Disclosure and Resource Center Web Site located at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com

You can also call 1-888-MSFT-Y2K within the United States, toll-free, or contact your local Microsoft subsidiary.

Please see the REFERENCES section below for more information about the other parts of this readme.


MORE INFORMATION

Microsoft Visual InterDev

Installation information

Connecting to a SQL Server

If you will be using MDAC 2.1 to connect to a SQL Server, you must run the version of instcat.sql installed with MDAC 2.1 SP1, which can be found in your system directory.

To run instcat.sql:

  1. From the Start button, choose Programs, Microsoft SQL Server, and then run ISQL_w.


  2. When prompted, connect to the SQL Server server that you want to update.


  3. From the File menu, choose Open. From your system directory, select instcat.sql.


  4. From the Query menu, choose Execute.


Internet Explorer 5

Installing Internet Explorer 5 is strongly advised. Using Internet Explorer 5 with Visual InterDev 6.0 provides enhanced HTML editing and other benefits. Internet Explorer 5 is provided on the Visual Studio 6.0 Service Pack 3 CD in the IE5 folder under your language folder. It is also available from the Microsoft Windows Technologies Internet Explorer Home Page at:

http://www.msdn.microsoft.com

"NT SP4 not tested" Message

During the Visual InterDev 6.0 installation, if you are installing the NT Option Pack onto Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 4, you might see the message "We haven't tested this on NT SP4, do you want to continue?" You should reply "Yes" to this message.

Working with Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4

Since Visual InterDev 6.0 was released, Service Pack 4 has become available for Windows NT. It is recommended you install Service Pack 4 on your Windows NT Server computer. Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4 is available from the Microsoft Windows Update page.

The availability of Windows NT Service Pack 4 requires slight changes to the installation instructions published in the Visual InterDev 6.0 Readme file (ReadmeVI.HTM). In general:

Corrections to the Visual InterDev 6.0 Readme installation instructions (ReadmeVI.HTM)

Because Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4 is now available, the following installation instructions replace the corresponding instructions in the Visual InterDev 6.0 Readme file (ReadmeVI.HTM).

Client Installation: If You Are Installing on Windows NT

The following components are required for the PageNavbar design-time control, remote debugging, and previewing active server pages on your local machine. You may choose not to select these components if you do not want to take advantage of these features.
  1. Select Launch BackOffice Installation Wizard, and click Install.


  2. The BackOffice Installation Wizard will prompt you to select a Custom or Visual InterDev Developer option. Select Custom, and click Next.


  3. Verify the disk space requirements, and click Next.


  4. Select Front Page Server Extensions and MS Data Access Components from the top level of the components list.


  5. Expand the Windows NT Option Pack node, and select:

    Internet Information Server - for NT Server
    Microsoft Management Console
    NT Option Pack Common Files
    Personal Web Server (PWS) - for NT Workstation
    Transaction Server
    Data Access components (for example, Data Access 1.5)


  6. Clear the remaining components. As you clear the other components, the wizard might display a message that warns you of various dependencies. You can choose Yes to ignore the dependencies, because you are using this computer as a client for Visual InterDev and not as a server.


  7. Continue with the remaining steps of the wizard.


Server Installation for Windows NT

Perform the following steps if you are installing the server on Windows NT:
  1. When prompted by the wizard, select Launch BackOffice Installation Wizard, and click Install.


  2. The BackOffice Installation Wizard will prompt you to select the Custom or Visual InterDev Developer option. Select the Custom option, and click Next.


  3. Select the following options:

    Windows NT Option Pack 4.0
    MS Data Access Components
    Remote Machine Debugging
    FrontPage Server Extensions
    Visual InterDev Server


  4. Before you click Next, expand the Windows NT Option Pack 4.0 node. In addition to the options selected by default, select the Visual InterDev RAD Remote Deployment Support node. Then expand the Visual InterDev RAD Remote Deployment Support node, and select the second instance of Visual InterDev RAD Remote Deployment Support. Make sure Visual InterDev RAD Remote Deployment Support is selected at both levels.


  5. Click Next, and continue with the remaining steps of the BackOffice Installation Wizard.


  6. Install Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4. If you installed Service Pack 4 previously, you should reinstall it to update the server components you installed in Steps 1 through 5.


Changes to Data Connections

Data connections can now be established using OLE DB data source providers, which offer greater flexibility in data sources and more efficient connections. For data sources that do not yet support OLE DB providers, you can continue to use ODBC-based connections.

For more details, see the topic "Connecting to a Database" in the Visual InterDev 6.0 SP3 documentation.

Changes to the HTML Editor

New Glyphs

The glyphs used to mark non-visual elements differ depending on whether the editor is being used with Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or Internet Explorer 5. The glyphs used with Internet Explorer 4 are described in the documentation that accompanies Visual InterDev. The following table lists the glyphs the editor can display if Internet Explorer 5 is installed on the computer.

Glyph Represents 

 
 HTML comment (<-- through -->)

  
 Line break (<BR> tag)

  
 Beginning of division (<DIV> tag)

  
 End of division (</DIV> tag)

  
 Beginning of form (<FORM> tag)

  
 End of form (</FORM> tag)

  
 Beginning of paragraph (<P> tag)

  
 End of paragraph (</P> tag)

  
 Beginning of span (<SPAN> tag)

  
 End of span (</SPAN> tag)

  
 Style element (<STYLE>)

  
 Script in the <BODY> portion of the document. This can include client script block (<SCRIPT>) and inline server script block in .asp files (<% %>, or <SCRIPT RUNAT="Server">).
 

 Anchor point for absolutely positioned elements and for image elements that are aligned left or right (for example, <IMG ALIGN=RIGHT>). The glyph appears where the HTML tag defining the element is located in the HTML document. 


 Unrecognized HTML tags and unmatched ending tags.   

Improved White Space Preservation

If you are using Internet Explorer 5, Visual InterDev can do a better job of preserving the exact layout of an HTML file when filtering elements that require special handling, such as scripts and design-time controls (DTCs).

See also Exceptions to white space preservation later in this document.

Debugging ASP Script Objects

A new debugging feature has been added to the scripting object model that allows you to catch errors that occur in lower-level components (such as during database access), trace events, and display warnings when script objects encounter possible errors. For more information about debugging and the scripting object model, see the topic "Debugging Script Objects in ASP Pages" in the documentation that accompanies Visual InterDev 6 and Knowledge Base article Q224955.

Enabling ASP Script Object Debugging

The documentation for ASP script object debugging incorrectly says that the following script block is automatically added to an .asp page when you first create the page:

<SCRIPT id=DebugDirectives runat=server language=javascript>
// Set these to true to enable debugging or tracing
@set @debug=false
@set @trace=false
</SCRIPT> 
This is incorrect. The script block is not added to the page until you enable the scripting object model for that page.

Adding Debugging to Existing Applications

The new script object debugging features are automatically available when you create new webs in Visual InterDev 6.0. However, they are not automatically added to your existing applications. To take advantage of the debugging features, you must update the script libraries in your applications (projects) and update individual .asp pages, as described in the following procedures: To update script libraries in an existing application:
  1. In Visual InterDev, open the project you want to update.


  2. In the Project Explorer, open the project so you can see the _ScriptLibrary node.


  3. Right-click the _ScriptLibrary node, choose Add, and then choose Add Item.


  4. In the Add Item dialog box, choose the Existing tab. Use the Look in box to navigate to the master script library on your computer, which is usually in the following folder:


  5. \Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VIntDev98\ScriptLibrary
  6. Select all the files in the folder, and then choose Open.


  7. When prompted, confirm that you want to overwrite the existing files in your project's copy of the script library.


  8. Repeat this procedure for all projects in which you want to use ASP object debugging.


After updating the script libraries, you can add debugging to individual .asp pages.

To Add Script Object Debugging to an Individual .asp Page

  1. Open the .asp page and add the following block immediately following the <% @Language= %> block at the top of the page:


  2. 
    <SCRIPT id=DebugDirectives runat=server language=javascript>
    // Set these to true to enable debugging or tracing
    @set @debug=false
    @set @trace=false
    </SCRIPT> 
  3. Set the debugging options you want. For details, see the topic "Debugging Script Objects in ASP Pages" in the documentation.


Localized Error Messages for the Script Library

If an error occurs inside the script library when you are using Visual InterDev design-time controls, the resulting error message is displayed in English, along with an error number. You may look up the translated error text by error number. Translated versions of these error messages are available in SLErrors.htm on the Service Pack 3 CD under the appropriate language subdirectory in the \support folder. If you downloaded the service pack, SLErrors.htm is located in the folder in which you extracted the files.

Other Fixes

The following problems have also been fixed in Visual Studio 6.0 Service Pack 3. The "Q" number that precedes most fixes indicates the ID of a Knowledge Base article that provides further details about the problem and the fix:

Known Issues

Exceptions to white space preservation in HTML editor

When you load a document into the HTML editor or switch between Design view and Source view, the editor attempts to preserve the format of the document as closely as possible. However, this is not always possible. If you are using Internet Explorer 5, the following changes might be made to the document:

Individual Themes Deleted During Recalculation

When using source control to obtain files that belong to a theme, always perform a Check Out or Get Local on all files in the theme. You can do this by selecting a theme folder before getting the files. Otherwise, if part of a theme is local and the remainder is on the server, you might encounter problems. Recalculating links or switching from local to master mode might cause the theme to be deleted from your project. Likewise, check all files back in at the same time.

RDS Objects on Page Cause "failed to load" Message

If a page contains an <OBJECT> tag that references an RDS component, when you switch to Source view in the HTML editor, you will see the message:
Some objects have failed to load. The objects will be displayed as text.
This occurs because the RDS objects do not have a visual representation, so Source view cannot render them. However, the objects will function correctly.


REFERENCES

For more information about the Visual Studio 6.0 SP3 readme, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q230722 Visual Studio 6.0 SP3 Readme Part 1 - Overview and Installation

Q230724 Visual Studio 6.0 SP3 Readme Part 2 - Visual Studio

Q230726 Visual Studio 6.0 SP3 Readme Part 3 - Visual Basic

Q230727 Visual Studio 6.0 SP3 Readme Part 4 - Visual C++

Q230729 Visual Studio 6.0 SP3 Readme Part 5 - Visual FoxPro

Q230731 Visual Studio 6.0 SP3 Readme Part 7 - Visual J++

Q230732 Visual Studio 6.0 SP3 Readme Part 8 - Visual SourceSafe

Q230733 Visual Studio 6.0 SP3 Readme Part 9 - File Versions

Additional query words:


Keywords          : kbreadme kbservicepack kbVS600sp2 kbVS600sp3 
Version           : WINDOWS:6.0 SP3
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbinfo 

Last Reviewed: July 29, 1999