Microsoft has released “Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition Beta 2”.

Claimed to provide everything you need to begin building Web applications with ASP.NET 2.0. It provides:


Have any of you tried the first beta version? Let us know if you like it and compare it to PHP.
Here is the link to the download: http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/vwd/default.aspx

I don't like Visual Web Developer at all! I mean seriously, a lot of web development can be accomplished at the W3Schools website, including ASP.

I, however, took a look at the Microsoft Connect section and found a very useful tool that is extremely powerful and helpful in web development. Microsoft Expression (in all editions) is very helpful for creating valid pages visually. It follows the XHTML standard unlike the other tools FrontPage 2003 and Microsoft FrontPage Express.

Also, I think that PHP is more superior than ASP because the language has more functions and that ASP is a tad confusing when you begin learning it.

I prefer PHP also because that I am used to it, and learning ASP seems to be, um, weird and strange because it is a Microsoft technology and that it is less popular and less compatible with most of the popular web hosts (including Astahost and Trap17).

P.S. Visual Web Developer express might not be that good, but Microsoft Visual Basic express is quite awesome once you get to read the tutorial and sample projects.

I've looked into it a little. I don't see too many differences between it and other web developing applications, especially when looking at Dreamweaver. The only real advantage I saw in it was ease of working other languages and programs into your website, which is really not all that useful if you aren't running your own server.

~Viz

Hmm...seems like microsoft really trying hard to compete dreamweaver? I still prefer dreamweaver over all other programs being released. Maybe Im biased, maybe my reasoning will change when there is a web development can offer me more than what dreamweaver offers me already. =)

i downloaded the express version but couldnt get the sql items like logging in to work. :[

I really like the new 2008 version of web developer. Finally microsoft has created an easy way to
develop websites that use CSS to layout the look and feel of a site.

A huge improvement over that annoying theme engine in 2005.

I haven't tried the Visual Studio Express 2008 edition yet. The most annoying this is getting it to install! You need to exit all software and ensure that your Internet connection is working 100% of the time because once the connection is dropped, even for half a second, it never reconnects and you have to delete the temp files and start over again.

Downloaded the DVD version overnight, will install at some point. I hate that the SQL thing has to install with any of the products! Why would I need that?

Microsoft Update always shows updates for Visual Studio Express 2005, seems to update them, but then it says that there are the updates to install, the same ones! Hope this doesn't happen with Visual Studio Express 2008!

Yeah...unless you spend alot of time working in ASP .NET, just stick to dreamweaver. It's a much, much better software suite for website management.

Frankly though, I still do prefer an old school programmer's text editor instead of visual wysiwyg-type ones. Call me a fanatic but I never really trusted code generated by visual ide's very much---if ever in the future that I need to use them, I would most likely hand-check the generated code in the end and modify it for maximum cleanliness and efficiency.

I disagree... why not have a function popup the required arguments and variable types... I use MSVS2008EX for my win32 development and it works just fine... You can always create an empty project.... Plus they make the OS, so I trust their headers / vista compatibility / as well as their linkers and compilers..

Besides... it's not like the res editor's even included or anything sweet like that....