title: MVC, RAD, and view design tools
body: <p>Our company has a requirement to build a web based business line solution with 50+ forms. A lot of this would be CRUD on a central database. So far we have not tackled the web space before so this is all relatively new to us.</p>
  
  <p>Currently we are planning on using ASP.net MVC for:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>testability (Unit test etc)</li>
  <li>separation of concerns</li>
  <li>better long term maintenance (Which can be become a problem with WebForms from what I can gather 
  from other posts.)</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>However, we have hit a hurdle. After much research on various forums and tutorial videos we have come to the realization that ASP.net MVC does not support a drag and drop design environment.</p>
  
  <p>We have investigated using code templates etc in ASP.net MVC and these definitely speed up constructing the view in code. In fact most forums suggest using code templates etc. </p>
  
  <p>However our company generally has a very fast turnover rate with application builds and modifications.
  Sometimes we need to push out updates for the next day or week.</p>
  
  <p>We feel that not having a design tool for views may hamper us somewhat.</p>
  
  <p>We have so far considered/investigated the following:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><p>Build in Visual Studio in code. Refresh web site running beside IDE on second screen. Tweak rinse 
  and repeat.</p></li>
  <li><p>Use Microsoft Expression products. (Expression Web etc). Build view etc then reload in Visual 
  Studio to work on code behind. However I think I tested WebForms in this not ASP.net MVC.</p></li>
  <li><p>Use a web design tool such as Dreamweaver (or other) then copy html for view/page into visual 
  studio and hook up code behind etc.</p></li>
  <li><p>Use LightSwitch instead (We did not want requirement of silverlight and this seemed a liitle to 
  simplistic for our requirements so this was out of the question)</p></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>We thought maybe others have had similar experiences and could share their thoughts.</p>
  
  <p>So my question is, if any of you have had a similar situation, what tools did you use to design ASP.net MVC views while maintaining the ability to quickly and easily build new UIs or make tweaks?</p>