What is the best method.....

in learning to develop ASP.NET applications?

What I mean is, should I use the "drag & drop" features of Visual Studio whereby most of the code is generated by VS?

Or

Should I just open up a "blank/empty" web project in Visual Studi and goto the HTML view and just write lines of code directly?

Which is the best method for a novice?Definately, use the Visual tools provided by the Visual Studio IDE. I can safely bet that VS makes writing HTML code by hand a thing of the past. I personally make it a policy never to touch the HTML Source View as nearly everything that should be in there can be done in the code-behind or using Design View. You will find that things get done much faster if you go this route, as you will not waste so much time in formatting your controls.

hope this helps,

sivilian
It all depends how fast you want to go, and what you're willing to sacrifice to get there.

If you're looking to get the most out of your ASP.NET experience; I say add code directly. By doing this, you'll get a better understanding of what's going on behind the scenes. You can always take the easier road later on, when you have more .NET experience under your belt.
Definately, use the Visual tools provided by the Visual Studio IDE. I can safely bet that VS makes writing HTML code by hand a thing of the past. I personally make it a policy never to touch the HTML Source View as nearly everything that should be in there can be done in the code-behind or using Design View. You will find that things get done much faster if you go this route, as you will not waste so much time in formatting your controls.

No offense, but this is just flat out wrong. If you rely on VS.NET to spew out the garbage HTML it does, your page markup is going to look like dog do do.

If you 'care' about your page markup, you will make it a point not to ever go into Design View or switch back and forth as VS.NET will reformat your beautiful markup to a non-compliant load of poop.

Now dont get me wrong.. if you are a novice and are just fooling around, by all means use GridLayout and drag those controls to learn the basics of ASP.NET. Once you are done getting used to everything, make it a point to code your page's markup by hand, and compliant with web standards (something VS.NET 2003 will not do).

FWIW, VS.NET 2005 is supposed to be a huge improvement in XHTML compliance and apparently it wont screw around with your markup :)
Well I am definately not a novice and I am definately not fooling around, and I definately know the basics of .NET and I never code my HTML in HTML view and my HTML does not look like dog do do.

There are ways to format your HTML in Design view that will make it look very decent.

Let me ask you this though, if you never switch between Design and HTML view and you don't use Design view, do you mean to say that you do all your coding in HTML view because Design view reformats your code to a non-compliant load of poop...

Why use Visual Studio at all then?

sivilian
I use VS.NET for coding, like most developers... I sure as heck dont use it for it's second rate, non-compliant HTML generation. I don't see how you can advocate it.. even MS people **** about, hehe.

Yes, I stay strictly in code view for HTML generation. Even if VS.NET wouldnt spew out garbage HTML, I probably would stay in code view anyway, I get better control over everything by coding manually.

Dont get me wrong. VS.NET is the greatest thing since sliced bread.. i spend about 10 hours a day coding in VS.NET. I have yet to see a good HTML drag'n'drop tool that does a good job.. actually Dreamweaver is half decent, too bad it sucks for server-side coding