Fix: Can't hit Visual Studio breakpoints when debugging Windows Forms app in browser

In the past, I've run into a problem where when trying to debug a .Net Windows Forms application running embedded in an Internet Explorer window in Visual Studio, breakpoints will not be hit in the debugger. I've seen this issue myself in Visual Studio 2002 and 2003; a colleague just told me that the issue is apparently present in VS 2005 as well.

The solution is in the Project Properties dialog/pane, on the Debug tab, instead of checking the "Start browser with URL" radio button, the "Start external program" radio button needs to be checked instead. In the text field for "Start external program", enter c:\program files\internet Explorer\iexplore.exe (or wherever your local copy of iexplore.exe is located).

Optionally, you can enter the URL of the web page that you want to be initially loaded in the browser in the "Command line arguments" field.

Another thing to verify is that the <object> tab in your web page is pointing to the current debug version of your application's .dll file.

Once that is done, you should be able to successfully hit breakpoints when debugging the application running in the browser.