Last week I published several blog posts that covered some new web development technologies we are releasing:
- IIS Developer Express: A lightweight web-server that is simple to setup, free, works with all versions of Windows, and is compatible with the full IIS 7.5.
- SQL Server Compact Edition: A lightweight file-based database that is simple to setup, free, can be embedded within your ASP.NET applications, supports low-cost hosting environments, and enables databases to be optionally migrated to SQL Server.
- ASP.NET “Razor”: A new view-engine option for ASP.NET that enables a code-focused templating syntax optimized around HTML generation. You can use “Razor” to easily embed VB or C# within HTML. It’s syntax is easy to write, simple to learn, and works with any text editor.
My posts last week covered how you’ll be able to take maximum advantage of these technologies using professional web development tools like Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Web Developer 2010 Express, and how these technologies will make your existing ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC development workflows even better. Today we are also announcing a new lightweight web development tool that also integrates the above technologies, and makes it even easier for people to get started with web development using ASP.NET. This tool is free, provides core coding and database support, integrates with an open source web application gallery, and includes support to easily publish/deploy sites and applications to web hosting providers. We are calling this new tool WebMatrix, and the first preview beta of it is now available for download.
