Hello!
Well, I'm not sure what continent you're on, Judy, but if we're in the same place, maybe we're tired as "least productive developers". I very much prefer the older way of building websites, but looks like we are stuck with buggy, unreliable XPages development.
I just upgraded to FP3, so hopefully, it'll work better. I also have a WinXP machine, which is not strong enough for this kind of development. Perhaps the memory of your machine is causing problems, too.
One thing I did find was that if you update a custom control (e.g. a layout, used in many XPages), the layout won't update after a build. You can clear the cache, restart the server's http, switch browsers, etc..., but nothing seems to work. What I do is open one XPage, make a small change, remove the change, save it, then build. On the web, you'll see the changes.
Good luck!
Steve in NYC
"It hurts to be on the cutting edge."