ASP.NET and Visual Studio - Adding project references vs Bin Folder DLL

Question

I just started a new job yesterday and this is only my second job working in ASP.NET. We were setting up my dev box and were having trouble with some third party components like

Answer 1

It depends on how your project is set up. If you want to precompile your site (and get Intellisense to work properly) you have to have a Visual Studio reference. But anything dropped in the bin folder will be automatically loaded by ASP.NET at runtime... so it's possible to access that assembly's controls/objects in code behind without adding a project reference.

For small projects I just throw the DLL into the bin and add reference. For more complex sites/projects, I have a dedicated "library" folder for third party add-ons and code.