Tool Promises To Untangle Visual Studio.Net Config Files

Hunter Stone is offering Web.Config Editor, which the company says will open up, display and sort out some of the mess, as a free download from its site, HunterStone.com/wce/.

"Anyone who works with ASP.Net Web sites can use this thing," said Frederick Volking, vice president of marketing at Hunter Stone, a Microsoft Certified Partner based here.

"The problem with existing .config files is that each contains literally dozens of settings, each of those with a dozen or more parameters," he said. "Adding to that is that they are hierarchically inheritable, which means that if you have a Web and a sub-Web, you're quickly down four or five levels and you have no idea where a particular setting was set--it could be in a parent, a parent's parent, or a parent's parent parent or even at the machine configuration level."

This tool goes into the code, opens all the appropriate .config files and shows them in a precise, organized way, Volking said. More than 700 people have downloaded the code so far, he said.