Everytime I see a screen shot or presentation of someone using Nikhil's Web Development Helper, I'm thinking this is great. I should download and install it.

Well, I have downloaded and installed it on three different machines over time and it works on none of them and I'm pretty sure I've at least once followed the instructions correctly <g>. Install instructions in a PDF file? Ahem… You know there's an installer tool built into VS.NET that could probably do all the registration tasks. I know this is a free tool built on Nikhil's spare time, but it sure would be nice if it was a little easier to get installed and get installed correctly.

Apparently I'm not the only one who has this problem. It's a free tool and all but Nikhil hasn't bothered to respond to the many messages on his tool home page, so I figure maybe somebody else from Microsoft has any feedback on how to get the thing to actually run… There must be some additional dependency that's not being met here.

It seems it's working for some folks but not for others. In my case I've installed it on three different machines with very different configurations all of which supposedly have the right requirements (.NET 2.0 installed). Everything seems to work – GacUtil registers, RegSvr32 registers fine and I see the Web Developer button in the IE Tools menu. I've added the HttpHandler into the global web.config. But clicking on the button does absolutely nothing. IE's Add-in dialog shows it as installed. The IE Developer Toolbar is installed as well.

Anybody from Microsoft have any insight?