How to open web form web sites

[SaeedP]

Hi,

I'm trying to open an ASP.NET web form site in Visual Studio, but it keeps asking me which page is the starter page.

When I right-click on an aspx page to set it as the starter page, there isn't an option for that.

"What should I do?"

thanks,

 

[JohnH]

Try context menu for project/website, and Property Pages, there should be some start actions there.

 

[Skydiver]

As an aside, is this for new work? I would highly recommend skipping WebForms and instead use MVC, Razor Pages, or Blazor, or WebAPI with a JS-framework-du-jour.

 

[SaeedP]

As an aside, is this for new work? I would highly recommend skipping WebForms and instead use MVC, Razor Pages, or Blazor, or WebAPI with a JS-framework-du-jour.

Sure, here you go:

"No, I just need to take a screenshot from some old websites."

 

[Skydiver]

Okay... To open old web sites and take screenshots, you just tell the web browser to navigate to the site, and then you take a screenshot. Most easily done with Selenium...

You don't need to create a web forms app to open other websites.

 

[SaeedP]

Okay... To open old web sites and take screenshots, you just tell the web browser to navigate to the site, and then you take a screenshot. Most easily done with Selenium...

You don't need to create a web forms app to open other websites.

But that site isn't on the web now. Is there any way to fix this situation?

 

[Skydiver]

If the old site isn't active anymore, then you'll need to find the original source code of web forms project and run it. Is that what you are trying to do now? That old project should have the start pages defined already if that truly was the project used to build the web site.

Is this web form project that you are trying to run, actually the old web site that you need screen shots of?

 

[jmcilhinney]

@Skydiver, I had a different interpretation of what the OP is asking so I thought I should mention it so that whomever is wrong can correct course. You seem to be under the impression that the OP is trying to use some existing project to then open other web sites, whereas I assumed that the project they're talking about is the web site project they want it open and their issue is that it won't run in the debugger in its current state.

 

[Skydiver]

That was my interpretation as well in my post #7. It's why I was asking if the current web form project that the OP is trying to open the old project. I'm surprised that the old project doesn't have any startup pages set on it. Poor source control?

 

[SaeedP]

Yes, this project was created using WebForms. When I initially developed it, it had a starter page. However, now it keeps asking me what the starter page is.

When I right-click on a page, there is no option to set it as the starter page.

At that time, there was this option !!!

 

[jmcilhinney]

If you open the project properties, is there a place to select a start page there? I haven't worked with Web Forms for quite some time but I think it usually expects an index.htm or default.htm page and, if you don't provide one, you need to specify something else explicitly in the properties.

 

[Skydiver]

If you right click on your project and the go to Properties:

And then select Web on the left nav, then the Specific Page radio button, and finally the ellipses, that should give you the option to select a particular start page:

 

[SaeedP]

Thanks for your explanation. I realized that I made an error by opening a website instead of a web project. However, I encountered a new error:

I have used the DevExpress component in the past, but now I'm encountering an error related to it.

"Should I buy this component again just to take a screenshot of the website?"

 

[Skydiver]

The first thing to check is to do a version check. Your web.config wants to load 16.2.6.0, but if you've recently downloaded a new version of DevExpresss, the probabilities are that the versions don't match anymore.