I realize that it serves a purpose, but in truth my biggest complaint about Web Workbench is that when you click on "Mindscape -> Web Workbench Settings" you're basically presented this wall of files. This is extremely cumbersome in any large project - and in truth it's kind of useless.

This list is just huge, and you're expected to pretty much know all of your behavior right there, and organize it on that page. This isn't intuitive or helpful.

SUGGESTION

First, this could all be moved to a simple JSON file that goes at the project root (or somewhere else you specify) that just lets you list things like this;

// format: 
    - filename, output directory, compile, minify, options
[
 { "content/assets/less/bootstrap.less", ".", true, false, [] },
 { "content/assets/less/kendo.less", ".", true, true, [] }
]

Additionally, it would be a lot better if this policy was more baked into the context menus of Visual Studio. By default, this "workbench.json" file should be relatively empty - and you add files to it by right clicking on a file and using a new Context Menu category simply called "Web Workbench". This is obviously a trivialized example, but a layout kind of like this would be pretty useful;

Basically take the path of least resistance.

• Compile

As it sounds, this will compile the selected file based on what its extension is. This has several benefits...

• A lot of large projects have several small .less/.sass/.scss files that don't need to be compiled. Most developers break things apart like this and then have a larger file that imports them in the correct order. (see Twitter Bootstrap for a good example of this)

By letting you compile on demand, you save a lot of resources because Web Workbench isn't trying so hard all the time. It isn't trying to crunch every .LESS/.SASS file except when you ask it to.

• This removes a lot of the complication

This method means that you install Web Workbench, and you're ready to go. There's no real setup needed because it is more of a convention over configuration approach. It only does things when you ask it to. Beyond that, it gets out of your way.

I think these improvements would vastly improve the entire experience of web workbench.

Thanks a lot for your time, if anyone reads this!