hamang.net

It's not possible to change the project type in Visual Studio, as the project does not have a "properties" context menu item. The only option in the context menu is "property pages" as with regular web sites. Visual Studio actually thinks it's a Web Site and not a Web Application project anymore. The other missing context menu option is the "Convert to Web Application". So Visual Studio thinks it's a Web Site that cannot be converted to a Web Application Project. Not surprisingly as I converted the Web Site to a Web Application Project right after the Conversion Wizard.

Ok, I have to start digging into the project and solution files. Comparing them to other solutions using Web Application project files, I can't seem to find anything suspicious. After some googling with no result, I decide to stare at the screen for a while and use WinMerge to determine what the difference might be. Suddenly I find one minor difference:

The solution file that works:

Project("{F184B08F-C81C-45F6-A57F-5ABD9991F28F}") = "Clock", "Clock.vbproj", "{3B3D0F02-D310-4BFB-83AD-F62758BB8624}"

The one that fails:

Project("{F184B08F-C81C-45F6-A57F-5ABD9991F28F}") = "Calendar", "Calendar\", "{7B411329-B1CB-457F-A954-898DX16B85A6}"

That's it. The Calendar project reference is missing the whole path to the project file. When i change it to:

Project("{F184B08F-C81C-45F6-A57F-5ABD9991F28F}") = "Calendar", "Calendar\Calendar.vbproj", "{7B411329-B1CB-457F-A954-898DX16B85A6}"

it opens as a Web Application Project, and now the resx and designer files are properly connected:

There might be other issues causing this behaviour, but at least this solved my problem. This is just the everyday life using Visual Studio. Actually I think it's a great IDE, but there are some strange behaviours now and then.

Update - In some occasions you might wan't to remove the .webinfo file. This file can be causing this behaviour.  Just remove it and instead set the startup path for your application in properties for the Web Application project.