This drives me nuts. I have one third-party product in particular that has about 11,000 files in one of the directories. On sites using this system, from the time when I press the "Play" button to the time when it gets done "Validating Web Site" and recursing through the directory tree, it can often be 10 full minutes.
What is VS doing, and can I prevent this delay in some way?
This is a Web site project (not a Web application project).
already got that one, too. i think it is validating links to files like CSS, images, javascript etc...
i've searched for a way to avoid it - without success.
Right-click the web site and choose "Property Pages". On the "Build" tab at the bottom, make sure the two check boxes for accessibility validation are clear.
Also, if you are just trying to run a page to make sure it works, you can right-click on the .aspx file you want to open and click 'View in browser'. This will run that page alot quicker.
Also, you can leave it open while you make changes to it in VS and then just refresh the browser instance to see the changes in the output.