New VS2008 Feature: “Downgrade” HTML, CSS, and JScript Errors to Warnings

VS2005 introduced the ability to validate your markup and CSS for standards compliance alongside your code.  It’s a great feature, but it can be frustrating when you’re looking for that one critical compilation error underneath a pile of validation errors.  Well, we heard your feedback and added two new options in VS2008 (post-Beta 2): 1) “downgrade” HTML/CSS errors to warnings, 2) “downgrade” JScript errors to warnings.

The Two New Options

The VS2005 Default Experience

The VS2008 Default Experience

We hope this will separate the validation clutter way from what is stopping your build.  You can visually distinguish the warnings from the errors in the text editor as the warnings use green squiggles.  It’s worthwhile to note that both options also (implicitly) “downgrade” your warnings to messages.  Messages will be displayed with no squiggles.  Also note that, while the two options live underneath the “HTML” section, they will also affect your standalone CSS or JS files.  Should you prefer the VS2005 approach of “everything” as errors, un-checking the two options will bring you back to the exact same behavior you had before.